Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  “You’re the boss,” Boxers said. “But if I were the boss, I’d want more.” Big Guy had a special way with non-deferential deference.

  Hostage rescue was a delicate balance of finesse and violence. Methodical research and stunning speed. It left no room for mistakes. Cops could get away with raiding the wrong house and killing the wrong people because they had friendly prosecutors in their corner. Jonathan had friends, but not in those spaces. Besides, he didn’t know if he could live with himself if he killed an innocent.

  “We need eyes on,” Jonathan said.

  Boxers eyed him. “We need world peace, too. And let’s throw in eternal sunshine. The devil is in the details of getting it.”

  Jonathan had an idea. “Find me a liquor store.”

  Boxers laughed again. “Are we going to have a party?”

  “Sort of,” Jonathan said. Sometimes it was more fun to be cryptic than to be forthcoming. “This is a military town. How far can the nearest booze vendor be?”

  “You forget that you’re still in the Commonwealth of Virginia.” The state ran all of the liquor stores—and had just raised the tax to be paid on top of the sales over which they had a monopoly. Without the worry of competition, the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board put liquor stores however far apart they wanted, and charged whatever they pleased.

  Boxers cruised their recently purchased, old and smelly SUV out of the parking lot, and back down Route 1 in search of the familiar red, white, and blue sign of an ABC Store. This POS vehicle would be dumped when the mission was done, and they would drive back to Fisherman’s Cove in the Batmobile—Boxers’ name for the heavily customized and armored Hummer that was their real transportation. It never made sense to let security cameras see your getaway car.

  The liquor store resided in a strip mall that looked just like every other strip mall on that stretch of highway. “You’re really not going to tell me what you’re up to, are you?” Boxers asked as he nosed into the space.

  “I’m going to make myself stink,” Jonathan said, and he let himself out. Inside the store, he chose a pint of cheap bourbon, and paid in cash. Back in the vehicle with Boxers, he said, “Okay, let’s go back and see the genie.”

  “Not until you tell me what you’re doing.”

  Jonathan winked at him. He stripped the cap off of the bottle, pulled his shirt away from his body and poured about half the contents down the front of his chest.

  “What the hell?”

  “I need to smell like a drunk,” Jonathan said.

  Big Guy winced and raised a hand to his nose. “Well, that’ll do it. Jesus. Why?”

  Jonathan explained while they drove back to the Sleeping Genie.

  * * *

  Ethan went through the motions as if in a dream. A nightmare. His bruises had all congealed into a single body ache. Once they had shoved him into the back of the police cruiser in the parking lot, right in front of Raven and so many of his coworkers who had all filed out to see what the commotion was about, they shut the door and left him there for what felt like an hour. He wondered if maybe that was all about setting the humiliation hook as deeply as possible.

  He tried to ignore reporters’ camera lenses as they were pressed against the window. But he couldn’t miss the look that Raven had in her eyes when they locked glances. Her gaze cut him like diamond on glass. It was a look of utter disappointment, of betrayal. She broke the look off after an instant, but for Ethan the damage was done.

  So many faces stared at him. The clerks and customers from so many different stores pointed and said things, but he couldn’t hear and he told himself that he didn’t care. They didn’t know him and he didn’t know them, so what did they matter? They were no different than the kids that gathered around his schoolyard fights back in the day, just hungry to see the blood of the guy who lost and to cheer the winner. A few regular citizens tried to come in closer for a better look at him, but the police kept them all at bay.

  Among the crowd of cops who mingled between Ethan and the onlookers, Ethan could see the monster’s feet sticking out between parked cars. No attempt was made to resuscitate him or to take him off to the hospital. Ethan figured that that meant the Earth was finally free of one more child molester. He hoped that that meant his night terrors might go away.

  Detective Hastings opened the door of the police cruiser and leaned in. A smear of blood marked her arm. “Your name is Ethan Falk, is that right?”

  He nodded.

  “Where do you live?”

  He told her, and as he watched her read along from his confiscated driver’s license, he figured that she was verifying what it said.

  “Do you live there alone?”

  “No, ma’am. There’s a whole other family there. I just rent a room. That’s all I can afford.”

  “Are there weapons in the house?”

  “I have no idea. None in my room. Am I really under arrest?”

  The question seemed to confuse the detective. “You killed a man,” she said. “That’s a surefire way to get arrested.”

  “But it was self-defense. I already told you that.”

  “I’m not saying it wasn’t. But that’s not for me to decide. That’s for the judge and jury.”

  “So, I’m going to jail?” The realization that should have been so obvious barreled at him.

  Hastings smiled, might have even chuckled a little. “I can’t exactly let you just walk away, can I? You already told me that you killed that man. Do you expect me to just look the other way?”

  Ethan’s heart slammed itself against his chest. “You’re arresting me for murder?”

  Hastings cocked her head. Her eyes showed kindness that he hadn’t been expecting. “You know, Ethan, I’m just a cop. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not a priest. That means I’m not in the business of giving advice that people listen to. Having said that, I do have a word of advice in case you’re interested.”

  Ethan felt his shields come up. This was her opportunity to tell him to go to hell. He waited for it.

  “If I were you,” she said, “I wouldn’t say anything to anyone on any subject until I was sitting across the table from my attorney.”

  “But I don’t have an attorney.”

  “You will,” Hastings said.

  * * *

  Oh-three-hundred missions—hostage rescues—presented infinite variations on thousands of variables, all of which posed their own unique dangers. Each of these were directly linked to the fact that people were unpredictable even in the best of times. Once they felt threatened, their unpredictability often rose to the level of frenzy, and frenzied people often did stupid things such as shooting at hostage rescuers in spite of the rescuers’ superior firepower and skills.

  As a hedge, Jonathan and his team stacked the odds in their favor through the use of advanced weaponry, body armor, high-tech surveillance techniques, and flawless marksmanship. One of their most effective force multipliers was their ability to function in the night as effectively as if it were midday, thanks to night vision technologies. The darkness more often than not disoriented their opposing forces—OpFor—making even talented fighters less effective.

  In an operation such as the one that was unfolding at the Sleeping Genie, darkness posed an even greater advantage—that of being invisible to the surrounding general public. Even though Jonathan’s team was working at the request of a member of Congress, they had no legal authority to perform any of the operations they undertook. By statute, it was illegal to discharge a firearm in this part of Prince William County, and if those shots killed or injured someone, then Jonathan would have committed a homicide, and it would be left to a jury to decide whether or not the crime was justified. But first the police would have to catch him.

  His team always wore gloves on an operation, but as a practical matter it was virtually impossible to eliminate all traces of fingerprints, and with DNA technology being what it was, he couldn’t rule out leaving behind a drop of blood or sweat. The
good news was that a trace of such typical forensic indicators would lead nowhere. Neither Jonathan nor Boxers existed anywhere in the real world, thanks to efforts by highly placed friends in the government for whom he occasionally did work that for a number of reasons could not afford to be traced back to the officials who’d ordered it.

  Long-term survival in Jonathan’s world was all about managing the tiny details.

  Today, those details were all working against him. While a nine-year-old girl was in the grasp of kidnappers, every second of captivity was an opportunity for serious harm, but the smart call remained to await darkness and the advantages it brought. First, they needed to verify that they had the right place. Once that was done, they could set up surveillance—even deploy a small camera to watch what was going on—and from that develop a scoop-and-swoop plan that would mean the smallest amount of harm to the fewest number of people.

  As Boxers drove the rattletrap Ford back toward the Sleeping Genie, he said, “I don’t believe I’m about to say this, but if you can verify that she’s there, maybe this is one we need to report to the cops and let them handle it.”

  Jonathan swiveled his head to look at his friend across the center console. “And what would we tell them?”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Boxers said. “I know the drill. They’ll ask questions we can’t answer, but we don’t have to fill in all the blanks. We can just make an anonymous report and step away.”

  “That’s not what we’ve been hired to do. If we tell the local cops about this, they’re going to check with the FBI. Congressman Johnson seems to think that the bad guys have a source inside the FBI. If the jihadists get word, they’ll kill the kid. This is why we get the big bucks.”

  Boxers drove past the motel, presumably because he wanted to continue talking. “Don’t make it sound like I’m trying to pussy out of this,” he said. “If the PC is in there, how the hell can we wait till dark to pull her out? But if we try it during the day, the entire world will see what we’re up to. That’s too dangerous for us.”

  Big Guy’s point was a valid one, but the job was the job. “Tell you what,” Jonathan said. “After I scope it out, if I can confirm that Mindy Johnson is inside, then we’ll talk. Maybe we can contact the congressman and let him make the call. Tell him the stakes and our limitations, and he can decide.”

  “What do you think he’s going to say? He’s going to want us to go in and grab her now.”

  “We’ll just have to tell him that’s not how we do things. We’ll tell him we have to wait till dark.”

  Boxers weighed the idea. “You know he won’t go for that,” he said.

  “And that’s why we don’t ask others for their opinions, and we don’t invite LEOs into our operations.” LEO stood for law enforcement officer. Jonathan had never intended to call them in, but sometimes it was easier to let Big Guy arrive at his own answers in his own way.

  Boxers pulled a legal U-turn at the next light and drove the Ford back toward the Sleeping Genie. “How do you want to handle it?” he asked as they pulled into the lot.

  “I’m going to be the drunk looking for his missing girlfriend. When they open the door, I’ll see what I can see.”

  “What if they don’t open the door?”

  Jonathan flashed a knowing smile. “I really don’t think that will be an issue.”

  Chapter Three

  Ethan sat in that damned car for a long time—long enough for his left hand to go numb from the handcuffs. Finally, a uniformed cop slid in behind the wheel, glanced at Ethan in the rearview mirror, and then dropped the transmission into gear and drove off. The fact that the cop never asked him any questions made Ethan wonder if Hastings had shared with the others her advice for him to stay silent.

  The ride to the police station was short, maybe ten minutes. The cop drove around to the back, where they waited for a garage door to open. They pulled through, and then waited for the door to come back down before the driver got out, walked around to the back of the cruiser, and opened Ethan’s door.

  “Come on,” he said. “Time to get you processed.”

  Processed is what you do with sausage, not with people, Ethan thought, but he said nothing. As he shifted position to get out of the vehicle, he realized how full his bladder was. “I need to pee,” he said as he swung his legs around to stand up.

  “Go ahead,” the cop said. “They’re not my pants.” He put a hand around Ethan’s right biceps and helped him to his feet. “Thanks for the warning, though. Most prisoners aren’t that courteous. They just piss on you without notice.”

  Ethan considered asking the cop for a little help, but as soon as the image formed in his mind of a cop messing with his zipper, he knew it was a stupid idea. As was the idea of letting him out of the cuffs just long enough to do what needed to be done. He’d just have to endure.

  Saying nothing, he allowed himself to be led from the garage and into the basement of what he assumed was the local jail. The door through which he passed certainly looked thick enough and heavy enough to be part of a jail. And Ethan knew what he was talking about. This wasn’t his first rodeo, after all. The cops would soon find out about his previous history of breaking and entering and his two DUIs. A few abortive attempts at drugs, but the drugs never bent reality enough to be worth the risks. The high wasn’t worth the expense. Not when you could buy beer by the quart for a couple of bucks at 7-Eleven.

  He’d done this processing thing in each of those cases, but he’d been released on his own recognizance on the B and E, and let go from the DUIs after the mandatory six-hour stint in the drunk tank. The judge had warned him of dire consequences if he didn’t straighten up and fly right, and he’d been trying. Really, he had. He even thought maybe his life was back on a normal track.

  Until the monster. Until this nightmare. It was all still very new, but looking back on it from the perspective of a couple of hours downrange, he’d have done it again. The monster had to die. Had to. Surely these people would understand that.

  The heavy door slammed shut. Beige concrete blocks surrounded him on both sides as the cop led him across gleaming white linoleum that reflected and multiplied the glare of overhead fluorescent light. Fisheye cameras on the ceiling watched their every step. The hallway was narrow, and it terminated at another door, as heavy as the first, but this one sported a thick glass window.

  “Don’t move,” the arresting officer said. He stepped away from Ethan to what looked like a bank of safe deposit boxes. The cop punched numbers into an electronic pad and a metal door dropped open. The cop drew his pistol from his holster, slid it into the box, then locked the door with another code.

  The cop made eye contact with a guard at a desk on the other side of a heavy glass window, and the door buzzed. The cop pushed it open, and Ethan felt hope evaporate. He sensed that he’d breathed his last breath of fresh air for a very long time.

  In that vacuum of hope, he felt the hot urine stream down his right leg. It soaked his socks before it showed through his pants, and it streamed over his shoes. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” the cop replied. “It happens more than you might imagine. At least you don’t have to feel like you’re going to explode.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “It’s jail,” the cop said. “There’s a lot more embarrassment to come. Just try to keep it in perspective.”

  A man at the end of the hallway sat at another window, reminding Ethan of a receptionist in the ugliest medical practice in the world. He wore the same uniform as the cop who escorted him. The receptionist cop smiled as they approached.

  “So, I see we’ve got a bed-wetter,” he said. “I’ll make a note for rubber sheets.”

  “Give him a break, Vince,” the cop said. “This is Ethan Allen Falk. We’re booking him on a homicide.”

  “Ah, the big one!” Vince declared with a smile. “Bring him in and sit him down so we can get down to business.” The door next to
the window buzzed.

  “Can I change clothes?” Ethan asked his escort at a whisper.

  “Soon enough,” the cop said. “Really, don’t worry about the little stuff.” Ethan glanced at the cop’s name tag. He wanted to remember the nice cops. There was Hastings out there in the parking lot, and now this one. His name tag read, Bailey.

  The open door revealed an elaborate warren of doors and concrete-block walls. The light in here was dimmer, and there was a lot more noise—the sound of many people at work doing many things. Officer Bailey led Ethan to a long metal bench. “Have a seat,” he said. “This will take awhile.”

  “Nathan, I haven’t seen you in what, a week?” Vince said. “You been on vacation?”

  “I took the kids to see Mickey down in Florida,” Bailey said. “Fifty thousand screaming tourists. I’m back to take a vacation from my vacation.”

  The small talk went on for twenty minutes as Ethan sat on his bench, crossing and re-crossing his legs as he tried to find a comfortable posture. Nothing seemed to work. By the time he was called up to the tall desk, the bench had filled with five more men in handcuffs. They all looked way tougher than he, and none of them had pissed their pants.

  Officer Bailey gripped Ethan’s biceps and helped him to his feet. “Sometimes balance is a little hard when you don’t have your hands.”

  “Okay,” Officer Vince said, “I know that you’re on the record not wanting to answer any questions, and that’s fine, but these are just for information’s sake. Nothing about the charges against you.”

  Ethan gave his name (again) and his address (again). No, he didn’t have any medical conditions, and no, he was not on any prescriptions. No, he was not addicted to any drugs, and no, he wasn’t intoxicated—as if they wouldn’t find that out for themselves. And finally, no, he was not experiencing suicidal ideations. He wondered what percentage of the people Vince processed had any idea what that term even meant.

  Officer Bailey donned a pair of black latex gloves and Ethan stood still as the cop rummaged through his pockets yet another time. They’d already stripped him of everything out at the scene of the attack, and he didn’t wear any jewelry. Bailey unfastened Ethan’s belt and pulled it free of the loops. He wrapped the leather strip around his fist to make a loop, and then stuffed the loop into a plastic bag that was then inserted into the other plastic bag that contained his stuff.