Headhunters

by Charlie Cole

  I ducked down an aisle, keeping low, then came out the end with the pistol leading the way. The figure was gone. I glanced around. We were alone. I ran for the door the figure had gone through. It was a conference room. Plenty of places to hide. I stopped outside. Breathe… ready… go! I ducked inside, gun up and scanned the room. The figure was disappearing out the door on the far side of the room. Before he was out the door, he hit the light switch and the banks of fluorescent lights, blazed to life in the ceiling, blinding me. I ducked out of the room, trying to recover whatever bit of nightvision I could retain, my eyes struggling to adjust.

  The intruder was doubling back to the stairwell where I’d approached minutes before. I circled back, careful not to blunder into an ambush. I saw the man duck into the stairwell, but I noticed something wrong with him. He seemed to hobbling, as if in pain. I wondered if this could be Chris, thinking I was after him, trying to gun him down.

  “Chris?” I said aloud, my voice wavering. “Chris?”

  I pushed open the door and found Chris there, but it took me a moment to recognize him. His face had been beaten in a way that takes time and malice. Someone had worked him over… someone who wanted to extract information from him. His face cracked into the smallest of smiles when he saw me and he let out a sigh of laughter, but it only lasted a moment, before being overtaken by a wince of pain as he tried to walk. I realized he had been able to run… run when he thought it was for his life, but here in the presence of a friend, the relief took his legs from him.

  He reached for me to steady him and I saw that his hand was covered in blood. I tried not to react, to let him see my face as I assessed him, but the horror of it was too awful to keep it hidden. Chris had been shot once in the side, the bullet passing through flesh without hitting vital organs. He was bleeding badly, but it was the pain that crippled him more than the wound.

  Chris took a step toward me and his knee buckled. I stepped in, trying to catch him, but the sheer weight of the man brought us both to our knees. I cursed under my breath, tried to tell him that it would be alright and knew that I was the worst liar for having said it. He slumped against me and I felt pinned by him. I didn’t know how long he had or what I could do or how I could get us out of this, but I knew that I had to be there for him.

  “Chris, what happened, man?” I asked.

  “Your email…” he wheezed.

  “I didn’t send it,” I said. “That wasn’t me.”

  Chris nodded.

  “It was a fake… from your account,” Chris said.

  “Who did this?” I asked.

  Chris held up two fingers and I knew which two people did it. Brock and Vaughn. Kendrick’s people. I asked anyway, and Chris confirmed my suspicions.

  “What do they want?” I asked.

  Chris’ eyes narrowed, his head turned toward me and with a Herculean effort lifted himself closer to me as if to share a secret. I leaned down.

  “They… want… you…” Chris said, his voice straining in effort.

  In that instant, the words barely escaping his lips, I heard a silenced gunshot in the stairwell. The bullet struck Chris in the back of the head. His body jerked and I must have cried out in shock because I heard the echo. My body shuddered in shock and revulsion. Chris was dead.

  I looked up and saw Agent Vaughn standing by the stairway leading down. He’d crept up on us while we’d been talking and had killed Chris in the moment before he could reveal more. Vaughn smiled and I saw the barrel of his silenced Glock shift ever so slowly from Chris to me. I was next. There was no question. I understood now what was happening, but I wasn’t ready to go that easily.

  I brought my right hand around Chris’ body and fired the Glock at Vaughn. He must not have expected me to be armed. I shot him twice in the chest, the jacketed hollowpoints ripping through his jacket. Vaughn grimaced and fell back into the wall, dropping his gun and fell down the stairs.

  It was the gun that caught my attention. It was a standard issue Glock 19. It was the weapon of choice of Blackthorn field agents. Agents like Brock. Brock had used a gun like that. I looked harder. The gun lying on the landing in the stairwell, wasn’t only a gun like Brock’s… it was Brock’s gun. Brock had installed low profile Novak combat sights on his pistol, same as this one.

  It came to me then. I’d taken Brock’s gun from him when he’d come to the house with Kendrick. I’d taken it from him… or had he let me take it from him? My fingerprints were on the pistol. When I had handed the gun back to Brock at the house, he’d taken it from me with the hand with the handkerchief he’d been holding to his broken nose. I’d thought nothing of it at the time, but he’d been trying to preserve my fingerprints on the gun. The gun that had just been used to kill Chris. Vaughn had been wearing latex gloves.

  I was being framed.

  I heard footsteps on the stairwell. Someone was coming. I pushed Chris off me and managed to get to my feet. I held out the pistol, waited. The steps were moving away… Vaughn.

  I picked up the Glock 19 pistol, checked the load and went down the stairwell. There was no point in leaving the gun behind and letting it be discovered by someone else. It was a powerful clue. Better to take it with me than to leave it behind. Vaughn’s body was gone. Either I hadn’t hit him as cleanly as I’d thought, or he was wearing a Kevlar vest. It would stop a bullet, even at this close range. I’d have to make sure I put him down next time.

  I wound my way down and around the stairwell. The parking garage level was just below Vaughn. I could see him now, his hand on the railing as he ran ahead of me. I couldn’t let him get to the garage or I’d lose him. Too many places to hide, too many traps that could be laid.

  The level before Vaughn reached the parking garage, I tried to kill him. I leaned of the railing and fired both Glocks. The sounds of the gunshots in such close proximity was deafening. Vaughn reeled back from the railing, narrowly avoiding the gunfire. He’d taken the door onto the floor above the skywalk. He was trapped.

  I flung open the door to the 4th floor and waited for gunshots, but heard none. I was safely hidden from view, anxious about exposing myself. Unfortunately, I had no choice. I threw the door open again and dove in. I somersaulted into the room, careful not to stay silhouetted against the light of the stairwell. I saw no movement.

  Then I heard a crash and realized what a fool I’d been. While I was playing games with the door, playing “shoot-don’t shoot”, Vaughn had run to the back conference room and thrown a chair through the glass. He was going to get away…

  I ran toward the conference room just in time to see Vaughn jump from the window. I feared that I’d look out after him only to see him fall to his death. Instead, he fell about fifteen feet and landed on the skywalk directly below us. He was running across the roof of the skywalk, headed toward the parking garage. Vaughn was running, but felt confident enough to look back at me and laugh.

  I snap-aimed and fired once. The bullet hit Vaughn in the upper back and sent him sprawling across the rooftop. I was shocked. I’d been aiming for his head.

  I jumped down onto the roof of the walkway and stalked toward Vaughn. He was getting to his knees, trying to stand. I wasn’t about to give him a chance. I aimed both pistols at Vaughn, but before I could pull the trigger, he spun toward me, bringing up his backup pistol, a small .38 revolver he kept in an ankle holster. Vaughn had me in his sights and fired.

  I dropped, falling backwards as Vaughn fired at me. The bullet passed over me and I landed hard on my back. Air rushed from my lungs on impact, but I forced myself to return fire. I hit him in the chest and he spun and fell from the skywalk, disappearing from sight. It took me a moment to breathe again and when I did, I had to struggle for the strength to stand.

  For the second time that night, I was hesitant to look to see where Vaughn had fell, but this time, he was gone. He had vanished as quickly as he’d appeared. I holstered my own Glock and put Brock’s pistol in my back pocket. I looked again, but the agent was st
ill gone. Nowhere to be found.

  Then my phone rang. I answered it.

  “Hello, son.”

  Kendrick.

  “Have you figured it out yet?” he asked.

  “Kevlar. He was wearing a Kevlar vest,” I said.

  “Of course he was,” Kendrick sounded irritated. The observation was trite and obvious. “But Christopher Swenson wasn’t. You shouldn’t have killed him, Simon.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “I didn’t. You know that. You set me up,” I replied.

  “Well, your file does indicate that you have paranoid delusions. That’s what your psyche profile says,” Kendrick offered.

  “That’s a lie,” I shot back. “You falsified reports in my psyche profile?”

  “That’s why you were released from Blackthorn,” Kendrick explained. “You just weren’t stable after your wife’s death.”

  “What is all of this about?” I demanded. “Just tell me what’s going on!”

  “It’s your last great act as a patriot, son,” Kendrick said. “You bailed on me after Claire died. I understand that, Simon. Lord knows we all need time. I needed time after Rose was murdered. But I used it. I turned it. It became fuel for me to go on. There are casualties in every war. But we fight on.”

  “I was fighting that war with you, Randall. I just needed a break!”

  “No! Not a break! You wanted to quit. There is no time to quit. We fight or we die. There’s no time to quit.”

  Silence drove a wedge between us and I suddenly felt exposed on the rooftop. I walked quickly back to the window managed to crawl back inside.

  “Son, I gave you nearly two years. Two years to heal. Two years to mourn. Life goes on. It’s time to get back in the game. But you turned your back on me. You refused to help your country when we needed you. So now, you are going to be the cause of the next wave of the war on terror.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I’ll shoot straight with you, Simon,” he said. “Chris Swenson is dead and his blood is on your hands. They are going to hunt you down for that. And when they do, they’ll find the files in your house… on your home computer.”

  My mind raced. What files? There weren’t any files — The night that I’d taken Alaina and the kids for the interview trip to Chicago there had been a break-in. Ken Gibson from Alexandria PD had checked out the house and said that nothing was missing. Which was true. They hadn’t taken anything. They had put something on my computer…

  “It’s a virus, Simon. Designed by the very best minds at the NSA. It is unzipping and loading files full of top secret data onto your system at your home. When the authorities come to investigate, you’ll be as guilty as sin. A spy, a techno terrorist stealing this country’s secrets to sell overseas.”

  “The Homeland Security project…” I said.

  “I had to get their attention if I wanted to keep my funding,” Kendrick said. “You are a terrorist, son. You recruited Chris Swenson to crack the DHS database. When you tried to turn him to give you more secrets, he refused, so you killed him.”

  “You’re a monster,” I seethed.

  “I’m a product of my times, son,” Kendrick said. “I’m the hand of justice when no one else wants to take the responsibility or the flack or the lagging approval ratings. I am the last bastion of security in this country and I will not be left out in the cold because of a coward like you!”

  The silence fell between us. If Kendrick and I ever met again, neither of us would offer mercy. We’d kill each other.

  “The police are on their way to serve warrants on your house right now,” Kendrick said. “They will seize your computer. Family Services will take your children. The FBI and corporate security are closing in right now and they’ll drag you out of that building. I will destroy your life the way you promised to do to me.”

  I could hear sirens approaching from outside the window and I began to run back into the building.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. The thought of my kids, of Alaina asleep in their beds made me want to cry, to be home with them, to cuddle them, to protect them. I tried not to let it carry in my voice.

  “This is your last contribution to the enduring safety of this country,” Kendrick said. “Take it like a man.”

  With that, my phone went dead. I stopped and tried to dial out, but it wasn’t working. My phone was being electronically jammed. I picked up a desk phone and tried to dial out. I got a recording of a female voice saying, “All circuits are busy…” I hung up and looked for my next course of action.

  I heard the elevator signal that it had arrived on my floor, followed by the sounds of corporate security. I pushed open the door to the stairs and ran.

  I’d seen the lights from the police cars outside so I knew that going out the ground floor wasn’t an option. I had to find another way. I ran up to seven and stepped over Chris’ body. There was nothing I could do there. He deserved better than to be left in a stairwell, but he’d be better served if I caught his killer than if I were apprehended trying to tend to his lifeless body.

  I ran to my office and opened my door. Five years ago or so, I’d been in a meeting and an analyst spilled their coffee on me, ruining my dress shirt. Since then, I’d taken to keeping an extra suit and change of clothes in closet at work. My clothes were covered in blood and grime and I had to get out of them. I needed to change, to hide and there was only one place that I could do both of those things. I retrieved my suit from my office and headed for Max’s office.

  Max was a reader. He liked literature and he and I had shared booklists and preferences and opinions from time to time. Because of the nature of our business, Max had mentioned his affection for George Orwell’s book 1984. Max’s key code combination for his office was also four digits. I knew from experience what the first two digits were, having seen him open up his office before. I had to wager that he used the book’s title as his pass code.

  I keyed in the numbers and the door opened. I ducked inside and closed the door behind me. I let the office stay dark and looked out through the blinds. The elevator sounded and security personnel flooded onto the floor. Their flashlights swept through the entire floor, searching me out. I crept back further into the office, until I knelt behind the desk. I could hear them looking, clearing areas, moving on to the next. They spent a fair amount of time in my office next door, after all, that’s where I belonged. They seemed perplexed that I wasn’t there. I shouldn’t have had access to Max’s office, so aside from rattling the door handle, they passed by the office without concern. Soon they were moving on. I knew that when they didn’t find me elsewhere, they would be back.

  I closed the blinds to Max’s office and sat at his desk. I tried his phone, but got the same message as before. I turned on his PC and logged in using Jess’ passcode. I feared that mine would trip an alarm in the system so I used hers. I had gotten it when she’d asked me to check mail for her one day when she was out sick with a stomach bug. I knew I’d have to remember to thank her later.

  The system booted up and I hit the Internet. When trying to recruit software people, a good headhunter will use any means at their disposal to contact a consultant. We had started using online instant messaging services as a means of getting messages to consultants so as not to disturb them when they’re at work. I accessed the site and typed a quick message to Alaina and hit ‘send’. I waited for her to reply. After what seemed like five minutes, she finally responded, asking me where I was. I immediately regretted the use of the format. Text messaging someone about blackmail and the safety of the nation is hardly compatible. I did my best and told Alaina to take the kids, get out of the house and to go to a storage facility on the way out of town. I gave her the access code for the gate and the lock combination on the door of the storage locker. Inside would be clothes, supplies and money to get her and the kids as far away as possible. I’d contact her later. She tried to ask me what had happened and
words failed me. Tell the kids I love them, I said and signed off.

  I checked my watch and realized that the office would open in an hour. I’d have to move quickly. I had no way of contacting Jessie. She turned off her cell at night when she went to bed.

  I grabbed my clothes and went into Max’s private bathroom. I hung up my suit and turned to the mirror. I remembered the night that I’d gone to tell Kendrick about my resignation from Blackthorn. The night that set all of this into motion. I’d taken the Glock with me that night and it had made me sick to think that I could have used it. Now, my hands didn’t tremble. And that scared me even more.

  I pulled off my clothes and scrubbed my face and hands to get the blood off. It was a difficult job, but I made a fair effort at it. I dressed in my suit and tie and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked respectable. I looked like me before everything had gone to hell. I shook my head and picked up the gun.

  Max’s bathroom was big enough to contain a stall with a toilet separate from the rest of the bathroom. I knew Max’s first stop in the morning would be to his office and then right to his private bathroom with the morning paper.

  I hid in the private stall, stashing my dirty clothes behind the toilet and out of the way. I checked my watch and prepared to wait.

  It was just after 6:30 that Max arrived in his office. He keyed in his code, walked in the door, dropped his files on his desk. He was whistling as if that day was a happy day. I was about to convince him otherwise.

  He entered the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror, examining a shaving nick under his chin. I’d been sitting, perched on the edge of the toilet, feet under me so I couldn’t be seen. I lowered one foot, then the other. I peeked through the crack of the door and saw Max at the sink.

  I centered the front sight of the 9mm pistol on the back of Max’s head and pushed the stall door open…