Termination Orders

by Leo J. Maloney

  “There you are!” said Natasha, her voice suddenly laden with enthusiasm, all traces of her accent gone from her voice.

  “Hello, Vera,” he said. After a faltering greeting, he seemed to draw some courage and kissed her as passionately as he knew how. It was still pathetically clumsy and awkward, Natasha noted. “I’m glad you came, although I’m afraid you’ll be doing a lot of sitting around until it’s time for the speech.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “It’s all so exciting!” She, Natasha, would normally have regarded Poole with nothing but disdain. But she was not herself now. She was Vera, a superficially adventurous publicist from Brooklyn with big soft eyes and a tender smile. She appeared to be the kind of woman who might conceivably, even if improbably, fall in love with a bore like Dennis Poole, as well as a woman who might feel genuinely sorry for manipulating him.

  “You’re dressed up,” he remarked. She was wearing a crisp gray pantsuit over a dark red shirt.

  “Well, I don’t go to one of these events every day, you know!”

  He led her toward the service entrance to the stadium, his hand in the small of her back. “She’s with me,” he said to the guard at the door, flashing the badge he was wearing on a lanyard around his neck.

  Inside, the tunnel-like halls of the stadium were pulsing with their own energy. But unlike the festive mood outside, the atmosphere inside was tense, and everyone was working hectically, preparing for the big event.

  “I’m really not supposed to bring you back here,” he said, with far more pride than remorse.

  “Oh, what harm could there be?” she said.

  He eyed her, raising an eyebrow in mock suspicion. “You’re not a spy, are you?”

  “Nyet, comrade,” she said with a sly smile, in an American accent, and he laughed.

  “Do you want to see the war room?”

  He led her down the long, curved hallway, past a steady stream of event staff, and through a door into the home team locker room, which had been repurposed for the rally, furnished with a long table that was stacked with boxes and papers. In the far end of the room, a minifridge hummed, with a jar and a glass sitting on top of it on a circular platter.

  “It’s not exactly what the space was designed for,” said Poole, “but the location couldn’t be more convenient in terms of proximity to the stage. Just hold on a sec. I need to take a look at something while I’m here.”

  Natasha slowly made her way around the table, trailing her left hand on the outer surfaces of boxes and the papers that lay strewn about. She reached Poole, who was rummaging through a box, and snaked her hand around his neck, pulling him in for a kiss. He offered only token resistance before leaning in.

  They were interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He looked at the display and grimaced apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I need to take this.”

  “I’ll hold the thought,” she said, giving him one more lingering kiss.

  He took the call and wandered toward a corner of the room, while Natasha continued to make her way around the table, affecting flawless nonchalance, running her hands over the documents, her fingers slipping lightning-quick into a box and taking out an ID badge with a lanyard hanging from it, which she dropped into her purse.

  Poole glanced at her as he talked, and she gave him a sweet grin as she continued to walk the length of the table. On reaching the end, she sauntered off at an angle as her fingers crept into her purse and found a small rectangular plastic case. She looked at Poole, smiling, but he was looking away. She clicked the case, and a small, clear strip stuck out like a tongue. It was adhesive, and with the exact refractory index of glass. Handling it took extreme care. Just one slip of her finger, and—

  She was startled by Poole’s voice, coming from a mere few feet behind her. “Come,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.”

  He ushered her out of the locker room, locking the door behind him, and then walked with her out to the field. Half of the verdant sports turf was covered with folding chairs sectioned off with rope, and an open stage had been erected in the middle of it. On the sidelines was a well-dressed woman surveying the scene, flanked by a couple of men in suits.

  “Dennis!” exclaimed Natasha. “Is that . . .?”

  “The one and only. She arrived a bit early, so I thought I might bring you around to meet her.” He called out to Senator McKay. “Lana! Lana, good to see you made it. How do you like the setup?”

  “You’ve done a hell of a job here, Dennis.”

  He beamed. “I’m glad you like it.” He pulled lightly on Natasha’s hand. “Lana, I’d like you to meet Vera Blackburn.”

  The Senator extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure, Vera. I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, smiling warmly.

  “It would be a great understatement if I said the same about you,” said Natasha, ebulliently. “I am a great admirer of your work, Senator.”

  McKay smiled graciously. “Thank you, Vera. I’ve tried to do my best to serve the people of this country. But I owe many of my accomplishments to Dennis.”

  “Oh, please,” said Poole bashfully.

  “He’ll deny it, but it’s true. You have a fine man here, Vera. This one’s a keeper.”

  “Don’t worry, Senator. I’ll treat him right.”

  Natasha looked at her watch. She had to extricate herself if the plan was to stay on schedule. She pretended to dig through her purse for something and made her phone ring.

  “Oh!” she said. “I’m sorry, Senator, would you excuse me please? I need to take this.” She walked a few feet away, took the phone from her purse, stopped the ringing, and put it to her ear. “Hello?” she said. “Oh, you’re kidding. No, in DC. Yes. Yes. Listen, is there anyone else you can call? Howard? Ugh. Okay, fine.” She huffed and put the phone back into her purse.

  “I am so sorry, but I need to go,” she said to Poole and the senator. “Work emergency, and apparently there’s no one who can deal with it except me. Please excuse me, Senator. It was such a pleasure to meet you, and I so wish I could stay.”

  “It was nice to meet you too, Vera. Pity you have to go.”

  She stepped aside, and Dennis walked with her.

  “I am so sorry, Dennis,” Natasha reiterated.

  “It’s the peril of being indispensable,” he said with a good-natured shrug.

  “You are sweet.”

  “Can you find your way out okay?” he asked, and he planted a kiss on her lips.

  “I’ll manage, I’m sure.”

  She walked into the bowels of the stadium, and whatever softness had been there before left her eyes. She was Natasha again, coldly alert, and the lightness in her step was replaced with steely determination.

  This whole show was all Nickerson’s idea. If she had had her way, she could have already killed McKay a hundred times over. And now Cobra knew about it, and if she knew him, he would be here, trying to stop her. But Nickerson wanted to make a splash, a goddamn spectacle. She wished she could dispose of him and be done with it, wipe that grin off his face for good.

  Patience, she told herself. Even he would outlive his usefulness, sooner or later. She wished it could be sooner rather than later, but Nickerson played a long game. And so she would, too. She could wait.

  Meanwhile, she had to get everything ready for the night’s show.

  Morgan sat in the back of an unmarked white van in the RFK Stadium parking lot, dressed in a stiff black suit and tie. He looked into a small pocket mirror, checking his hair, now all black, and his matching fake mustache, which looked like the one he’d had when he had just started work as an operative.

  “Damn it,” he said. “Where’s Cougar”

  “In the parking lot,” said Grant Lowry, who was hunched over a keyboard in front of four computer screens, as he motioned distractedly toward one of the monitors. The van had been fitted with cutting-edge surveillance equipment and an impressive array of computers, all according to Lowry’s exacting specifications. “He’ll b
e here in a minute or two.”

  Morgan had approached Lowry as the man had arrived home, walking from his car to his front door, on the day after he had failed to convince Boyle to help them. Lowry had fumbled ineffectively for the pepper spray until Morgan assured him that he wasn’t there to hurt him. Morgan briefly explained the situation and asked for help.

  “No way,” he had told Morgan, outside the door to his apartment building. He was jiggling his keys nervously. “No chance in hell.”

  “I can’t do this without you.”

  “You’re going to have to.”

  “She’s going to assassinate a senator, Lowry. And there is no one to stop her but us.”

  “Look, Cobra, I’ll bring this to Kline for you. I don’t even have to tell him I saw you. We’ll look into it and take the necessary precautions.”

  “I’ve already talked to Boyle, Lowry. He wasn’t exactly receptive.”

  “So now you want me to go against the Director? Cobra, that wouldn’t just be career suicide. That would be real, honest-to-God suicide.”

  “Then you’re just going to let the senator die?”

  “I don’t even like her,” said Lowry.

  “What about Nickerson? What about Natasha? You’re going to let them win?”

  “You’re the action hero, Cobra. Look at me.” He motioned down at his dumpy figure. “What do you think the odds are that I would survive an encounter with an operative?”

  Morgan threw up his hands. “I told him! I told him you wouldn’t do it.”

  “Told who?”

  “Cougar,” said Morgan. “I told him you’d side with the pencil pushers.”

  “Did you say Cougar? Are you by any chance implying that Cougar’s alive?” said Lowry, astonished.

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “And he said you’d help us, that you’d do the right thing. I said you didn’t have the spine.”

  “Do you really expect that reverse-psychology trick to work?” asked Lowry.

  “No,” said Morgan. “That’s what I’m telling you. I said you wouldn’t help us.”

  “Because it’s not working, Cobra.”

  “I didn’t think it was,” he said. “That’s what I told Cougar. But he insisted that you would come through. I guess I was right, after all.”

  Lowry turned around to leave, faltered, and then glanced back at Morgan with a look of annoyed frustration. “Okay, fine,” he said. “You win. I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

  “I appreciate it, Lowry.”

  “I’m not agreeing to anything yet!”

  “I know,” said Morgan.

  Three days later, they were in the back of the van in the RFK parking lot.

  “He had better be treating my car right,” said Morgan, as he put his foot up on Lowry’s chair and strapped a holster to his ankle. Then he picked up the gun, the small and easily concealable Walther PPK, his gun of choice from his days in Black Ops. He inspected it one last time, clicked the safety catch, and slid it into the holster. He looked at Lowry impatiently. If there had been more room, he would have been pacing.

  “When did you say Conley was getting here?” Morgan asked.

  “Three . . . two . . . one . . .” said Lowry, and, right on cue, there was a knock on the back door of the van. Lowry opened it to let Conley in, dressed in a suit to match Morgan’s.

  “That GTO steers like a dream,” he said, smiling broadly.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” grumbled Morgan. “You’re not the one who’s driving it out of here.”

  “If things don’t go right, neither of us is,” said Conley.

  “Shit,” muttered Lowry to himself. “Tell me, why am I helping you guys again?”

  “Because you’re an honorable man working for a corrupt organization,” said Conley. “And you want to set things right.”

  “Yeah, that must be it,” Lowry said wryly. “Now, look here. We’ll go over this one more time before you jokers go in. Natasha will be a needle in a haystack, but we’re not flying blind here.” He pointed to one of the screens. Morgan and Conley bent down to look at it.

  “That number on the blueprint, 340. The section numbers don’t go that high, so our best guess is that this is a range. That’s the distance she will be shooting from. Here”—he gestured to a screen in front of him, which showed a seating diagram of the stadium with a circle superimposed on it—“is the perimeter drawn by that range, measured from the stage as marked on Natasha’s blueprint, plus or minus ten feet. It just happens to intersect with the newly built luxury boxes, and Natasha’s blueprint is recent enough to include them.”

  He indicated the seating diagram on the computer, a row of squares, and pointed to the edge of the upper level. “And this one here, L13, was requested by none other than Senator Nickerson. From there, Natasha would have a clear view of the stage, as well as total privacy.”

  “You go in using these.” He handed each of them a ticket printed on fancy card stock. “Those will get you into the box seats. And these”—he gave each of them a laminated security badge—“will get you in without attracting much attention and let you move around the off-limits areas.”

  “Have you had any luck tapping into their security network?” asked Morgan.

  “It’s about to come online. As soon as it does . . . There.” He brought up a map of the stadium on the screen, and a few dozen red dots appeared, moving jerkily like a squadron of fleas. “Each of those is a member of the event security team. There’s a small delay, but I can pinpoint each man’s location within a few feet.”

  “You’re the man, Lowry!” said Conley.

  “I am, aren’t I?” He turned back to his computer and flicked through windows faster than Morgan could keep up.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lowry.

  “That’s not a good sound. What is it?” asked Morgan, alarmed. Lowry leaned back to let them see the screen. On it was a photograph of Morgan. He looked slightly younger in it, but it was no more than five years old. “What the hell is this?”

  “I guess someone knows you’re coming,” said Lowry. “This is on the network. Says here it’s supposed to be distributed to all security personnel. They’re going to be on the lookout for you, Cobra.”

  “Shit.”

  “Maybe you should sit this one out,” said Conley.

  “There’s no way in hell I’m hanging back,” said Morgan. “But we go in separately. That way, if I get caught, you still have a fighting chance.”

  “If you’re sure . . .” said Conley.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Let’s do this.”

  “All right, fellas,” said Lowry. “It’s showtime. Earpieces in!” Morgan popped the little device snugly into his ear.

  “Just like old times, eh, Dan?” said Conley, looking at him.

  Morgan looked at Conley and grinned. “Ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Natasha was outside the stadium again, walking toward the same service entrance she had used when she walked in with Poole earlier that day. This time, she was wearing a business-casual outfit that concealed a skintight black catsuit underneath. A strap over her shoulder supported a heavy black bag, and around her neck hung the event staff ID she had swiped, now with a picture of her. She flashed it to the security guard at the gate, who waved her in stiffly but did not ask to check her bag or frisk her.

  Once inside, she took a left and walked briskly down the long corridor that earlier had been so busy with scrambling staff but now was empty. A right turn up ahead led to the locker room and the senator, but

  Natasha’s destination was straight ahead and up. She pressed on, approaching the turn, when she heard echoing footsteps. She looked back, unsure of where they were coming from, and ran bodily into a man who had just rounded the corner. She raised her eyes and saw that she was face-to-face with Dennis Poole.

  “Vera?” he exclaimed, befuddled. “What—”

  Before he could say any more, she wrapped her hands around his head and snapped his ne
ck. He stopped talking midsentence and collapsed like a hunk of meat on the floor of a butcher shop. His lifeless eyes stared up at her, frozen in an expression of utter astonishment.

  She looked around and found a narrow broom closet a few yards ahead. She drew an automatic lock pick from her pack and in seconds opened the closet door. It was cramped, but it would do. She dragged Poole’s limp carcass across the dirty concrete floor. Dragging corpses was always heavy and cumbersome, and for all her training, her frame was still not cut out for it. With a great deal of effort, she managed to heave the corpse inside and shut the door, locking it again. It was a hasty hiding place, but the closet should keep its secret long enough. As she turned away, a small part of her felt a twinge of remorse. Perhaps it was whatever aspect of Vera that still existed in her. But in any case, it was short-lived. Her attention was soon drawn to the applause that had erupted from the stadium. The event was about to begin, and she needed to get into position.

  CHAPTER 41

  In a few minutes, the rally would start, and all the VIPs had apparently already been seated, judging from the absence of a line at the gate for the luxury boxes. Morgan knelt between two cars and waited for Conley to go in ahead of him. Two alert security guards were working the entrance, however, and Morgan decided there was no way he could make it past them with a gun. He unstrapped his ankle holster and tossed it under one of the nearby cars. Someone would be surprised to find it later that night, but by then it wouldn’t matter anymore.

  He saw Conley disappear into the stadium. He counted to one hundred and then emerged from between the cars, walking toward the gate. He could only hope the guards wouldn’t recognize him, with his current disguise, from the old photograph. If they did, this mission was over for him, and it was all up to Conley.

  Morgan walked confidently to the nearest guard and presented his ticket. The man scanned it, saying courteously, “Good evening, sir.” He motioned for Morgan to open his arms and spread his legs, then ran the metal detector baton along the outline of Morgan’s frame. “Enjoy yourself, sir,” the guard said, waving him in. Morgan walked past the guard into the stadium, then breathed a sigh of relief.