The Consultant

by TJ O'Connor

“Salaam.”

  “Salaam.” Caine continued in Farsi. “There is a problem.”

  “What now, Caine? Have you gotten your arms around Saeed?”

  “I’m working on that.” Caine gritted his teeth. He didn’t like being pressed on something so dangerous and difficult by someone who was not taking the risk. “It’s something else. A witness.”

  The voice paused before returning with an intensity framed with worry and the late hour. “A witness?”

  “Yes. He literally drove into the cleanup.” Caine let it sink in. “He’s a pro.”

  “A pro? Out here? This is rural Virginia, not Kandahar.”

  “I’m here.”

  “You were invited.” The man paused too long. “I’ll find out who this pro is.”

  “This could disrupt the plan.” Caine took a moment to sweep the binoculars across the line of police cars and ambulances across the river. “If it does, we could lose the targets.”

  Silence.

  “If …”

  “I do not accept ‘if.’” The voice was hard, flat, without inflection of concern. “You must deal with Saeed Mansouri and handle Khalifah’s targets. No one must interfere. No one.”

  Caine already knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “The witness?”

  “You may have to act.”

  “Again?”

  Silence.

  Caine didn’t like that answer. “That isn’t in the plan.”

  “None of this was the plan.” The voice was gritty now. “Give me a day to take care of him.”

  “If you can’t?”

  “Then you’ll have to.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Day 2: May 16, 0245 Hours, Daylight Saving Time

  East Bank of the Shenandoah River, Clarke County, Virginia

  “YOU DIDN’T KNOW Kevin’s married? About Sam?” The burly cop shook his head and didn’t conceal his disgust. He dropped his notebook onto his unmarked cruiser and stared at me as though I’d just insulted mom and apple pie. “What kind of a brother are you?”

  The kind who left two decades ago and never looked back. “Look, Officer …”

  “Detective,” he snapped for the tenth time. The ice in his voice showed he’d counted, too. Bond was a plainclothes version of the uniformed cops milling around the crime scene. His close-cropped sandy hair, brooding posture, and bulging sleeves were intimidating enough without the bulldog stare he locked onto me. “Detective David Bond. So, the only thing you understood him saying was Khalifah and ‘it’s not them’? Something about ‘G’?”

  “And Baltimore. Something about …”

  “Baltimore. Yeah right.”

  Bond was just to the bad side of hostile with me. While I didn’t like it one bit, I got it. Kevin was a cop—one of their own. When a cop goes down, they take it personally—they’re no longer objective investigators or patrolmen. They feel it deep and hard. They don’t want only justice. They want revenge.

  I glanced over at Kevin. His body was partially shrouded while the coroner worked on him. Without having to see beneath the sheet, I still saw his face and felt his lifeless body in my arms. I’d be seeing his face over and over. It took years to forget my folks’ burial. Kevin might haunt me forever.

  “Hey, yo. Mallory? I asked what Kevin meant by—”

  “I don’t know.” I shook off bad memories. “He was dying. I didn’t take notes.”

  “Watch it, Mallory.” Bond raised his chin. “I don’t like your lip, even if you’re Kevin’s brother.”

  Mallory? Me? Yes, me. Oh crap. I used to be Jonathan Mallory. Was I still a Mallory?

  The name stung deeper than the windshield shards in my face. I hadn’t gone by Mallory for too many years to count. I’d almost forgotten its claim on me. Was there even a trace of Jonathan Hunter Mallory left? Now, the name was foreign and deceitful. I’d simply been Jonathan Hunter for eighteen years. Failing to explain that to Bond would cost me later. Now was not the time. Any revelations of my past would take too much explanation. Too many questions. Too much time. They just might land me in a jail cell. A jail cell would lead to computer checks, fingerprints, and telephone calls. If the dominos started falling toward me, each one would raise Bond’s radar until it was on high alert. My long-lost name had no residences, no past employers, and no library card.

  Jonathan H. Mallory was as dead as Kevin Mallory—and for much longer.

  In the end, though, the problem wasn’t whether I was Jonathan Hunter or Jonathan Mallory, or both. No. Jonathan Hunter was just one of me. I have a few noms de guerre on passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards. I have several sets of each. If Bond peeked behind the curtain, he would bring bigger trouble than anything I could imagine, and I needed none of that. Assuming, of course, he wasn’t the stereotyped muscle-bound, crew-cut, angry copper stuffed into a golf shirt and khakis that he appeared to be. If he were a real detective—a thinking man—then my cell was just a police car away.

  Let me explain.

  Ten days ago, I, under the name of Jeremy Kelly, left the rocky Afghan mountains bound for Qatar. In Doha, I, as Martin Levinson, business development entrepreneur, skipped town on a transport for Germany. After another day of metamorphosis, I flew to Washington, DC, walked through US Customs, and became Christopher James. After a visit to my stash of stateside belongings, Mr. James became this “me,” Jonathan Hunter, international security consultant and world traveler extraordinaire. Jeremy, Martin, Christopher, and Jon—damn, it sounds like a rock band, doesn’t it?—are all me.

  There are others, too.

  Why the subterfuge? I’m a consultant. Sort of a handyman for very special clients. Well, one very special client. In my business, particularly when in faraway, dangerous lands, one needs a new identity from time to time. One also needs to shed them and slip another on fast. So, if I’m on a job in say, Islamabad, and things get unfriendly, it’s harder to hunt me down when the guy who stirred up trouble never existed in the first place. You’d never find me on any visa list, passenger manifest, or hotel bill, either.

  For now, though, I’m Jonathan Mallory—five-eleven, oneninety, fit and toned, with dark hair, tanned complexion, and three days’ scruffy beard. The name fit like an old suit made for a younger man thirty pounds ago. Forgive me, Kevin.

  “Mallory?” Bond pulled me back to the here and now. “You listening?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. “I need to get some sleep. I’ve answered your questions. It’s very simple, Detective. I don’t know any more than I’ve said. We done?”

  “No, we’re not done.” Bond leaned in close and drilled his pen into my chest. “Your brother? You know, the corpse in the mud? He’s a BCI agent and that makes this a big deal. We’re going over everything twice.”

  By twice, he meant fifty times. By BCI, he meant the Virginia Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the state’s version of the FBI. Kevin was a state cop. A detective. I’d learned that from our last phone call. How many years ago? What I didn’t know about him outweighed what I did. Like that he was a husband and father.

  But what about G? Khalifah? Maya in Baltimore? What else?

  Something tickled my brain, and I slipped the heavy, folded paper that Kevin had given me out of my pocket. It was torn from some kind of pre-printed paper, more like light cardboard, with a decorative double-red lined border partially remaining on one side. On the other was a barely legible, hand-scribed address—25783 Christ.

  I handed the paper to Bond. “I just remembered. Kevin had this.”

  “You just remembered?” Bond read the paper and looked at me shrewdly. “Just now?”

  I shrugged.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “I don’t know.” I wasn’t lying. “Listen, I’m tired. In shock. Give me a break, Bond.”

  “Detective Bond.” He stuffed the paper into his pocket. “Let’s start over.”

  “No.” I walked a few feet away and leaned on another cop car. “There’s nothing more for me to
say.” Shock gripped my brain as I struggled to make sense of the past few hours. “I doubt you’d listen anyway.”

  I looked over at the smoldering pickup truck as a fireman probed the truck bed with a long bar. I lost interest when Bond came close again.

  “Look, lose the attitude and give me the truth.”

  “I already did. You just haven’t written it down.”

  He pushed his pen deeper into my chest. This time, it threatened to puncture my lung. “Watch your mouth, Mallory. You’re nothing like your brother. You’re just a smart-mouth asshole who showed up too late for his murder.”

  He didn’t even swing and he hit a home run.

  “Or maybe you didn’t.” He eyed me. “What do you think, Mallory? Is that what this is about? Maybe there wasn’t any shooter.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Whoa.” Bond’s breath was hot on my face. “I don’t know who you think you are, but that attitude isn’t helping. Your brother’s dead. You haven’t helped tell us with who or why, but you’re damn sure smack in the middle of it.”

  Yes, I was. Damn smack in the middle. The question was, in the middle of what?

  Guilt stabbed my gut and twisted. He might be right. Well, maybe half right. If I’d met Kevin a day sooner—swallowed my pride and taken an earlier flight—he might be alive. Maybe I could have stopped this. Perhaps the body lying in the mud would be the killer instead.

  Maybe. Perhaps. Damn.

  Someone near the pickup yelled, and several deputies and plainclothes detectives ran over. A fireman reached into the truck bed with a gloved hand. He lifted something black and charred into the lights cast by the surrounding cop cars.

  A human arm. It was dark and burned crisp and still smoldering.

  “Wait here, Mallory.” Bond hurried over to the truck.

  The activity around the firemen escalated until two crime scene technicians took over and the cops moved back. They began photographing the truck bed from a tall folding ladder and recording notes on a notebook computer.

  Bond returned to me and gestured toward the truck. “How is it you left that body out of your story?”

  “My story?” I looked at the pickup. “I hate being redundant, but fuck you.”

  The body in the pickup truck was news to me. But it explained one thing. The shooter braved open ground to reach that truck and torch everything. He had no way of knowing I was unarmed at that point, but he took a desperate chance to destroy the truck and the body inside.

  What was so important about him to brave a bullet? Kevin was dying. The attack was already over. The shooter could have escaped unseen but risked everything to burn the truck and body. Was it Khalifah?

  “Look, try to keep up, Detective. It’s simple.” From my perspective, it was. “I rolled in here to find Kevin and someone started shooting. He took out my rental car, and at one point, he charged us—Kevin and me—tossed a flash-bang into that truck, and escaped.”

  Bond cocked his head. “A flash-bang?”

  “Yeah, you know magnesium and ammonium.” I cocked my head. “A couple million candles of flash and one hundred seventy-plus decibels of bang.”

  Bond’s jaw tightened. “How is it you know about flash-bangs? What about the body?”

  Give me a break. “Look, I was trying to save Kevin. It was dark and rainy and I stayed with him. I didn’t run around investigating. There could have been ten bodies out here, and I wouldn’t have seen them.”

  “Maybe.” Bond backed off a couple steps and looked across the lot. “Agent Bacarro wants to speak with you.”

  “BCI?”

  “Oh, no, it’s your lucky day. She’s FBI.” Bond’s smirk was sand ground into the cuts on my face. “She’s the task force boss. So, watch your mouth. She’s not as nice as me.”

  Terrific. I’d killed Taliban nicer than him.

  The crime scene hushed when two medics placed Kevin onto a gurney and shrouded his body. When they rolled him over the gravel, they nodded to me before they slipped the gurney into the coroner’s van. Bond said something, but I hadn’t listened. The van’s doors slammed closed, and, a moment later, Kevin left our favorite childhood fishing hole for the last time.

  Something stole the air around me. Daggers stabbed my gut. Thoughts swirled, collided, and refused to land. I couldn’t catch my breath. The darkness collapsed around me and squeezed every muscle in my body like a giant snake. The trembling began again.

  No. Focus, Hunter, focus. One, two, three.

  The trembling stopped. My gut turned to stone. My thoughts fluttered and found feet. “I’m home, Kev. I got this.”

  Before the tears could escape, I willed myself into “opsmode”—a place I’d found on my first firefight outside Kabul. Adventure had turned to terror. That night, while patrolling for trouble I’d hoped to find, I discovered youthful invincibility was a myth. We’d been ambushed by a dozen gorillas, and the bullets were whistling inches around me. Bravado and machismo melted into breath-stealing terror until my partner pulled me to the ground and held my eyes in a vampire stare. Ops-mode began to take over. It cleared away the clutter of panic and focused me. It was a state of mind where fear couldn’t rule. Terror was reined in. Emotions numbed. All gears on business.

  It took over now. Thank God. There would be time for emotions later. After I found Kevin’s killer. After I balanced the scales. In time. In private. After.

  Bond stepped close and smacked my shoulder. “Here’s Bacarro, Mallory. Remember what I said.”

  Bacarro was a dark-haired woman in her midthirties. She emerged through the glare of patrol car lights and stopped near a group of uniformed deputies. In her wake was a short man, five-feet-four or so, with lean, dark Middle Eastern features. He wore jeans and a pullover with a heavy semiautomatic holstered on his left side. Unlike the rest of the cops, he didn’t have a gold shield clipped on his belt or dangling from a chain around his neck.

  My inner radar pinged when he looked straight at me and narrowed his eyes. Then he said something to Bacarro, turned, and strode away.

  Who was he and why so shy?

  Bacarro continued her trek to me. She wore an FBI embossed windbreaker and ball cap. Her face, pretty I think, was taut and angry, and her eyes had the gritty redness of dried tears. It was a face that might have resembled mine had I not fought back. She didn’t seem to care.

  “Is this him, Dave?” Her voice was monotone with a wisp of contempt. “The long-lost brother nobody heard of?”

  Terrific, another fan, and I hadn’t even opened my mouth.

  “Yeah. He’s a real peach, Victoria.”

  “Delightful.” She extended a hand to me—odd given her tone. “I’m Special Agent Bacarro, Special Agent in Charge of the local FBI task force. Kevin was one of my team.”

  Her hand was cold and clammy. Winchester had an FBI task force? I asked her, “When did Winchester get on the map?”

  She eyed me and nodded slightly. “It’s more on the map than you know, Mallory. The task force is from the WFO. That’s the Washington Field Office. I run a satellite office here. We’re part of the JTTF.”

  I didn’t need a translation. Even us spooks overseas knew what the Joint Terrorism Task Force was. Most major cities around the country had them. They were operational law enforcement centers run by the FBI and manned by multiple jurisdictions like the state cops, city cops, sheriff’s departments, ATF, Customs. Everyone played a role. Their mission was simple—stop the next 9/11.

  Still, Winchester had a terror task force? Had ISIS made a wrong turn on the Beltway and ended up in this tiny town?

  She watched the questions on my face but asked a doozy herself. “Why haven’t we heard of you, Mallory?”

  Good question. “I’ve been away for a few years. Kevin and I didn’t talk much.”

  “Why’s that? Exactly?”

  “I don’t know.” That wasn’t a lie. “That’s what I came home to find out.”

  Bond and Bacarro exchanged curt looks.<
br />
  I threw a chin toward her Middle Eastern pal, who was standing near a group of firemen but watching me intently. “Who’s that?”

  “Don’t worry about him,” Bacarro said. “Worry about me.”

  Funny thing to say. Even funnier since her pal was fixed on me. “I worry about everyone. Humor me.”

  She turned and watched the Middle Easterner suddenly turn away and disappear between the emergency vehicles. “He’s Agent Mo Nassar. Now forget him and let’s get back to you.”

  As I was about to press her further, Bond interjected with, “Where have you been?”

  “Exactly?” Bacarro added.

  “Overseas. Germany mostly. I’m a security consultant.”

  Bond’s face twisted. “Like, alarms and security systems?”

  “Sometimes.” But most times it was guns, guards, dogs, and barbed wire. Other times, well, movie stuff like sneaking and shooting and fighting and skullduggery. “Other things, sometimes.”

  Bacarro eyed me. “Kevin was your brother, huh? Now he’s dead. Got any ideas?”

  “No.” My face turned to fire and the air got thin again. I leaned back on the cruiser’s hood and glanced skyward. “Can I go?”

  “I know it’s rough, Mallory,” Agent Bacarro said in a softer voice. “Explain again why you’re here. By the river, I mean, tonight. I find it odd.”

  “Coincidence. Listen, I’ve been through it already fifty times. I came home to meet with Kevin. I had no idea where he lived, so I pinged his number in a cell phone app and got this location. We used to fish here when we were kids. I came here.”

  “You pinged him?” Bond glanced at Bacarro. “An app for finding cell phones? How come I don’t have one?”

  A huge mistake. “It’s a big-boy toy, Bond, and—”

  He pounced. His powerful paws clutched my shirt and lifted me up and backward onto the hood of his car. “You wise-mouth prick.”

  “Enough, Dave.” Bacarro grabbed his arm and pulled him away. She was as cool as they came. Since joining us she hadn’t taken her eyes off me. She watched and listened. She knew how to look for the lie before the lips spoke it. It was about body language and attitude. She listened, not to the answers, but to the word choices, the inflections, and the practiced lies. Good cops—good interrogators—asked basic, straightforward questions. Then they shut up and listened to the answers. They watched for the lies. Special Agent Victoria Bacarro was a pro.