Termination Orders

by Leo J. Maloney

  Nickerson barely had time to make himself comfortable when his intercom chirped. He picked up.

  “Senator?” came a voice over the intercom.

  “Yes, Greta?”

  “Your three o’clock is here. A Vera Blackburn, an aide to Senator Weidman.”

  He frowned. “Did she have an appointment?”

  “It’s on the planner, sir.”

  “All right, then.” He shrugged. “Send her in.” He placed the receiver back in the cradle, picked the draft bill up again, and put his feet on his desk, pretending to be engrossed in the document. He looked up nonchalantly as the door opened, and he nearly upset his chair when he saw who it was.

  He knew her only from photographs, and they did not tell the whole story. She was tall and in her late thirties with slight wrinkles around her eyes but still a knockout in her sleek business outfit that was perhaps slightly too flattering for the part. Her walk was naturally seductive, a rhythmic gait that accentuated her sensuous curves. Hers was a striking, murderous beauty, with high cheekbones and sleek, light blond hair. But most of all, it was her eyes that were frightening, deep blue eyes that betrayed nothing but casual pitilessness, like that of a tiger regarding a baby antelope that had stumbled into its lair.

  Natasha. “Wh-what are you doing in my office?” he demanded, trying to be intimidating but not convincing even himself.

  “Come now, Senator,” she responded, with honeyed undertones in her barely accented speech. “Surely you wouldn’t turn away the person who has been doing your dirty work.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  She shrugged. “The door. You saw me come in.” She ambled slowly around the office as if she owned it, touching this and that, running her hands along various surfaces. “You seem to think you’re a lot safer than you really are. Like a handful of fat, middle-aged security men will keep someone like me out of here. I barely even had to try.” She had made her way around the office and now stood in front of him. “Good thing I work for you, no?”

  “You can’t be here,” he said through his clenched teeth. “What if you’re seen?”

  “What of it?” she said, casually. “Do you think I care? I don’t exist. I’m not the most trusted politician in America. Isn’t that right, Senator Nickerson?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She looked up at a crucifix he had nailed to the wall. “Are you a religious man, Senator?” She was mocking him, with just a hint of a threat. “Or is that only a show for the voters? Or”—she grinned maliciously—“do you truly believe you will go to a better place when you die?”

  “What are you, a reporter? How about we cut the small talk and you tell me why you’re here?”

  “My, you are all business, aren’t you?” She gave him a cool smile. “Okay, then. I am here for two reasons,” she said. “First, I wanted to see your face when you saw me. Men like you, they do not face the truth of their actions. They sit in their fancy cars and big offices and let people like me do their dirty work. Well, here I am. The face of all your sins. And I must say, it gives me pleasure to see you squirm.”

  “I’m glad you’re having fun,” he said, losing his patience. “But I’m not the one who failed to kill Cobra in Afghanistan. I’m not the one who let him escape with the goddamn photographs and I’m not the one who let the Agency spook take the goddamn pictures in the first place. So instead of coming in for this very pleasant meet-and-greet, maybe you should be out there trying to fix your own screwups.”

  She eyed him menacingly; her tone became ice-cold. “Cobra was more slippery than I expected. I underestimated him. But that is a mistake that I will rectify soon.”

  “You’d sure as hell better, or—“

  “The second reason I am here,” she said, interrupting him, “is that I want you to know that our relationship is going to change. As of now, my fees are doubled, and you are no longer entitled to secrecy. You will tell me what I want to know when I want to know it. Do you understand?”

  “You think you can come in here and tell me what to do?”

  “The alternative is to come in here and slit your throat.” She pouted seductively. “Do we have an understanding, Senator Nickerson?”

  “Yes,” he said, gritting his teeth. “We do.”

  She chuckled. “Of course you say ‘yes.’ But you are a coward at heart, and like any coward, you will turn back on your word as soon as I walk out the door. But it is of no matter, because I will be enforcing our little agreement.”

  He glowered at her.

  “I want to know what your plan is. The master plan. What are you in for, Nickerson? What are you trying to accomplish here? And don’t give me that bullshit about doing important things away from government oversight. You don’t give a shit about improving humanity.”

  “I guess you’re right about that,” he said, with a wry smile.

  “What’s the endgame, Nickerson? What’s your angle? Money? Is that it?”

  Nickerson laughed. “Money? My family already has money. Money buys you yachts and fancy cars. It buys you a house on Nantucket and the French Riviera. Hoarding money is the ambition of small people. Me, what I want is power.” He smiled. For a man who wore a mask nearly every minute of every day, it was liberating to speak freely. “What I want is power,” he repeated. “Real power. The power to do anything I want. The capo di tutti capi. Politicians, those Wall Street assholes, the President himself—they are all going to line up to kiss my hand.”

  Natasha laughed.

  “What?”

  “Your delusions of grandeur,” she said, smirking. “Very amusing.”

  “Trust me. You are small-time. You know nothing of real power. How to get it or how to wield it.”

  “Perhaps.” She slinked closer to him. “And yet I could kill you right now. It wouldn’t even be difficult. And for all the power you say you have, there’s nothing at all you could do about it.”

  He instinctively backed away from her, regarding her with the impotent fury of defeated pride. She stood there, her gorgeous face inches from him, her faint perfume smelling like death. She snapped her teeth at him, as if she was going to bite him. He flinched. She grinned.

  “By the way,” she said, turning and stepping away from him, tracing her finger on his desk, “our mutual friend has already alerted me to my next assignment. I must say, you are a bold man, for a senator.”

  He looked at her with wounded pride, but he knew how to take things in stride. “So you accept it?”

  “Yes, I will do it.”

  “And the Cobra situation?”

  “He will be dead by morning.” As she turned to leave, she looked back at him over her shoulder. “You will be hearing from me, Senator.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Morgan parked the Sebring around the bend from Plante’s suburban home. It was in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, sparsely populated and cut with twisted streets that wound around in a lightly forested area. The thick old trees, which during the day would provide pleasant shade, now seemed to fill his line of sight with ominous dark corners. He got out of the car and started making his way to the house. He kept to the shadows as much as possible, all the way up Plante’s inclined front lawn and the house’s front steps, lit only by the flickering lamppost on the street below.

  Plante’s home was a two-story, two-car-garage brick house. Morgan was hoping that Plante would be waiting for him, but no one came to the door as he approached. He knocked lightly—the doorbell would too easily announce his presence to anyone who might be nearby. Getting no answer, he tried the handle and found that the door was unlocked. He pushed it ajar, and it creaked slowly open, the streetlight behind him casting his shadow far into the entrance corridor.

  The house was mostly dark, but there was one visible source of light, spilling from a room all the way down the hall. The stillness gave Morgan a bad feeling. As he crept toward it, he wished he had the comforting weight of a gun in his hand. That feeling hit him harder when he reached the door, looked in
side, and saw Eric Plante.

  Plante was slumped over on his desk, his face turned away so that the back of his head was turned towards Morgan—or what was left of it, anyway. Most of it had splattered on the wall behind him. Blood, sticky and deep crimson, had pooled around him and was trickling down to the floor, where it formed a dark stain on the carpet. Without thinking, Morgan stepped into the room to examine the body. From the blood spatters on the wall, he unconsciously worked out the trajectory of the bullet, following it backward with his eyes to a broken pane on double French doors to the outside.

  Sniper.

  Instinctively, he dodged out of the way, just as he heard another pane crack and a bullet whiz past his ear, hitting the opposite wall. He stood flat against the far wall—with the floor-to-ceiling window in between him and the only way out of the room. Exiting would now move him into the shooter’s line of sight. Any sniper with decent reflexes would be able to hit him before he made it halfway to the door. If it was T holding the gun, which was all too likely, he would not even get that far. He was trapped.

  Morgan told himself that panicking would not help. He let himself breathe and assessed his situation. Outside, by the light of the room, he could only see a few feet of the backyard lawn. The rest was engulfed by the darkness, and he had no hope of catching a glimpse of the sniper. The French doors had curtains, which were currently open, but they were too wispy to provide any decent cover. Plus, any move to shut them would get him killed. Behind him was a built-in bookcase with below-waist-level cabinets that held, along with books, a couple of Plante’s nicer pipes and tobacco. He knocked on the interior wood backing, hoping for a hollow sound, but it was solid, with no way to break through to the other side. There was no way out of that room that wouldn’t get him a bullet in the head.

  Morgan’s gaze was drawn to his dead friend. The damage was mostly from the exit wound, and his face was marked only by a single round hole in his forehead. He stared blandly out of his still-open eyes, a blank look on his face, showing no surprise. He had never even known what had happened to him. Under his head was a file folder, half-covered in a puddle of blood.

  Plante had known something. Could he have been looking over the relevant files before he died? Things he wanted to show Morgan? And how could Morgan make a grab for it, right in full view of the sniper?

  His mind raced. The only light in the room came from a metal lamp on Plante’s desk. It was an architect-style lamp, heavy-based, articulated, and intensely bright with a metal reflector. He followed the cord to where it was plugged into the wall, just a few feet away on his side of the room. He had seen no other light on in the house; unplugging it would plunge the room into total darkness. It would leave the sniper blind—unless, of course, they—she, he was almost certain—had night vision.

  Well, he thought, only one way to find out. He reached out to grab the plug, knowing that if his hand was within the sniper’s line of sight, he would lose it. In one quick movement, he pulled it, and the room went dark. He stood in silence for a few seconds. No gunshots. If the roles were reversed, and he was suddenly blind, he would be shooting up the room right now. Not a good sign. But he had to make sure.

  He grabbed a large hardcover book from the bookshelf, about the size of his head. Let’s see how good your reflexes are, he thought, and he flung the book past the window. The shot came immediately, hitting the book and sending it flying toward the opposite corner of the room.

  Damn. The cover of darkness wouldn’t help him.

  But . . . He had a thought. The sniper might be able to see in the dark, but too much light too quickly would temporarily overwhelm the night vision. The lamp on Plante’s desk was powerful and would again suit his purpose fine.

  He grabbed the cord and edged the lamp off the table, careful not to pull too quickly. It teetered off the table and landed on the thick carpet with a thud, base down, as he had hoped. He pulled it quickly out of the sniper’s sight. Then he clicked it off at the base and plugged it in once more. Picturing the spatter patterns on the wall and the broken windowpane, he worked out the shooter’s approximate position. This would have to be quick.

  He positioned the lamp just out of sight, adjusting the blistering hot reflector with his hand, burning himself slightly even through his tugged-down sleeve. Then he took a deep breath. Here goes nothing, he thought, and in one motion, he clicked the lamp on and pushed it out into the sniper’s line of sight.

  Immediately, he heard the cracking of a glass pane, the shattering of much thinner glass, and the metallic clang of the bullet hitting the reflector. Sparks flew. The bulb, which had barely had time to flash on, was instantly extinguished.

  The shot had come fast, too fast for a sniper who should’ve been shooting blind. How had the shooter known his move before he made it? He felt the pain of the burn in his hand, and it became obvious: the heat signature. The sniper was using a thermal scope. Even with the lamp off, that scope would have been lit up like a Christmas tree.

  It was hopeless. His only choice was to risk running out in front of the window and hope that the bullet wouldn’t find its target, knowing that, if it were he at the other end of that scope, he couldn’t miss. Here goes, he thought, his calves tensing in preparation for the sprint.

  And then his eye caught a single point of light in the room: a spark from the lightbulb still smoldering on the sheer curtains. And he had one last, mad idea.

  He opened the cabinet and groped around through a series of small objects. Please, Plante, he thought, tell me you kept it here. His hand found a cool tin container, and his heart skipped. He picked it up and shook it slightly. It was about half-full of liquid. He brought it up to his face, and the unmistakable odor of lighter fluid wafted to his nose.

  He sprinkled the fluid at the curtains and the floor in front of the door, shaking the tin hard enough that its contents would reach the other side. He did this until he exhausted the container, and then he went back into the cabinet. He found what he was looking for: a matchbook, the kind that restaurants and hotels give out. He ripped out one of the thin paper matches and lit it. He then touched it to the rest of the match tips, and they ignited. The flash of phosphorus burned brightly in the darkness.

  He smiled as he dropped the matchbook onto the fluid-soaked carpet. It lit up in a blue blaze that climbed the curtains and raged toward the ceiling. He heard numerous tinkles of cracking panes and realized that the sniper was shooting blindly. The smoke alarm started beeping maniacally, and in the din, Morgan laughed out loud and yelled, “Can you see me now, bitch?”

  Now he had to make his move. The sniper wouldn’t be able to target him, but he could easily get hit by one of the bullets sailing past. And he had another problem now, too—the fire was spreading fast. It wouldn’t take long for the whole room to turn into a blazing inferno.

  Then he happened to look at the desk and saw, by the orange light of the flames, the file on Plante’s desk. He couldn’t leave it behind.

  He listened for the shots. Soon the sniper would take a brief respite. It would be only moments, to take a second look and reassess, but it would be enough. And then . . .

  The bullets stopped coming, and he sprang from his corner. He found the bloody file with his hand as he passed and yanked it from under Plante’s dead head. The bullets came but too late—he was already outside the line of fire. He dashed through the door to the hallway and out the door. It was a short run to the car from there. He was out of the woods, for now.

  So long, old friend, he thought as he glanced back at the house. The only response was the rising smoke and the faint flicker of the consuming flames inside. It was a funeral, of sorts, a final blaze of glory that would consume his former handler’s slim body.

  Morgan ran as fast as he could back to the Sebring. He got in, tossed the bloody folder onto the passenger seat, and sped off toward I-495, his eyes darting constantly to the rearview mirror to make sure that T hadn’t managed to follow him. His next destination was
to see his wife and daughter, and he would not sleep until he reached them in Vermont. He glanced at the folder on the passenger’s seat. What kind of answers would it contain? Would it tell him who the mole in the CIA was?

  But what if it did? He was running out of allies. The only one in the Agency whose loyalty he could be certain of was Plante, and that was because he was now dead. But he was on his way to see his family. That was more important than any investigation.

  While he was still wired from the adrenaline, his first two hours of driving flew by. But the stress of the past few days finally caught up to him. He had barely slept in four days, during which time he had flown halfway around the world and back, while continually being chased and shot at. He forced himself to keep going, saying Alex and Jenny’s names like a mantra as exhaustion threatened to make him delirious. He had to get to them, had to stay ahead of his pursuers. He gripped the steering wheel, hunching over, holding on by a thread. He tried to slap himself awake, but still sleep encroached on him. Several times, he awoke with a start to find the car drifting onto the shoulder of the road.

  He couldn’t help his family if he was in the hospital, he thought, or dead from a traffic accident. He pulled onto the shoulder and backed onto a dark, rutted access road so that the car faced the highway for a fast getaway yet was just far enough in to be hidden from view. At least he could avoid being spotted at a rest stop. Twenty minutes. That’s all I need. He reclined his seat and closed his eyes. Twenty minutes, and I’ll be back on the road.

  CHAPTER 23

  Harold Kline yawned into his hand, and as the elevator doors opened, he was startled to see CIA Director Boyle standing in front of him.

  “Sir,” said Kline, flustered, shifting the heavy folder in his arm.

  “Good morning, Kline,” said Boyle, stepping aside for Kline to walk out into the hallway. “What’s the latest on this Cobra situation?”

  “The forensics team at Plante’s house found evidence of an accelerant,” said Kline, walking along with Boyle.