Headhunters

by Charlie Cole

  Chapter Nine

  Three years ago I had to use my government-issued sidearm for the first time. I was in a bathroom in a train terminal. It was a bathroom that was very different from the private washroom adjoining Max Donovan’s executive office. But in that moment, holding the Glock in my hand, I flashed back to that first time…

  Randall Kendrick and I had been the tightest of comrades. We were working at the peak of our time at Blackthorn. Our project was to track a terrorist cell on the west coast. The intel we uncovered through unofficial phone taps indicated that a group of extremists intended to launch an attack in Los Angeles. It was to be the counterpart, the bookend to the 9/11 attacks.

  I recruited specialists to crack bank records and we followed money transfers from overseas to two individuals domestically. From there, we hacked into their private systems and discovered the location of the planned attack. It would be a rail line in Los Angeles. They were using an encryption on their communications and the exact time and place was encoded.

  We didn’t have enough to go through official channels yet, so we took the project on ourselves. We’d track the suspects, disrupt their communications as well as radio signals they might send to explosives and the like. When we had independent confirmation, we could call in the LA SWAT team. Our purpose was the deepest depth of clandestine ops. We were the lowest of the low. We operated as our own terrorist cell to wreck havoc on the terrorists. To disrupt and destroy and leave them in shambles. Exactly what they had done to us.

  I coordinated the teams operations at the train terminal. I had a full technical team monitoring mobile phone conversations, radio frequencies, any kind of electronic crosstalk that could be uncovered. We had a team of specialists on the perimeter working. I sat in the middle of the station, in what could very well be the epicenter of the attack. I was the man on the ground.

  Before long, we caught the communication via cell phone. They were closing in. Two men with a biological agent that could be spread through the train cars. Using GPS satellite tracking, we could target the men down to a two meter area and track them as they moved on foot. We called the LAPD and the local FBI field office and the men were quickly taken into custody. Because of the state of the nation at the time and fear of growing public panic, the situation was never released to the media or the general population.

  I thought the situation was over and got up to leave my post when I saw the third man. His features were dark, but I wouldn’t necessarily have picked him out as Middle Eastern. He would have passed as Latino or even African American. He stood silently watching the arrests, then turned his attention to me. He was watching me, watching them. And somehow in that moment, he knew. He knew I had a hand in it.

  I turned and walked away. I crossed the train platform and walked up the stairs. I could see in the rounded mirror in the upper corner of the stairwell that the man was following me. I picked up my pace and walked onto the upper level. There were several exits, and I knew he’d anticipate that I’d take one. Instead when I was out of his line of sight, I ducked into a men’s room, hoping to lose him.

  I walked past the first two stalls and entered the one at the end. I stepped up onto the toilet and crouched. I hid my feet from view but to my distress, realized that the door had no lock. For that matter, it had no latch. Some industrious vandal had removed the hardware leaving the door to swing freely open or closed with no stop in between. I was contemplating my options, whether I should move or stay when I heard the door open.

  It was the man from the train station. At first I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew. In retrospect, I recognized the sounds of his shoes, new and not yet broken in, purchased for the purpose of being used for the train incident. The footsteps were coming closer. I heard them stop, then squeak, then start again. The second time I heard the shoes squeak I realized that the man was looking under the stall doors, squatting down, looking for me, trying to see my feet.

  The footsteps stopped and I could imagine him crouching to see my feet in front of the last stall. I tottered on the toilet, feet tucked under me, trying not to be seen, holding the door shut with one hand in what seemed like the most ridiculous act of a charlatan that anyone could ever imagine. My ruse wouldn’t last. There was nowhere else I could have gone.

  I launched myself forward and put my shoulder to the door, slamming it backwards into the man, sandwiching him between the door and the wall. His head made a resounding smack as it hit and I tried to run. My feet slid under me on the bathroom tile. I scrambled, trying to regain my balance, but I felt his hand grab for me. I managed a step, then two, then he was on me and we fell to the floor.

  I had no advantage. The man was five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than me. I tried to squirm away, but he’d fallen on me, sitting on me like a big brother wrestling with his younger sibling, only this man wasn’t playing. He swung a fist at me and I managed to curl my arm up to protect my head, elbow by my temple and his fist only struck my bicep. I tried to break free, but there was no chance. He tried to hit me again, but I covered up. I had to get away or he’d find an opening and I’d be finished.

  I saw him shift then, reaching back for something. I seized the opportunity and reached into my belt for my Glock 26, the mini 9mm pistol Kendrick had made me carry. I pulled the gun out at the same time I saw what the man was reaching for… it was a wicked looking blade of Damascus steel, grey and black and insanely sharp. He was bringing it down toward my heart when I fired the Glock. The gun was so close to the man that the muzzle flash scorched his shirt and the flesh under his chin. The bullet struck him under his jaw and exited through the top of his head. I was covered in blood spatter and for a moment, the man sat still, his face frozen in anger, his body stiff in shock as his life left him. And then he fell, not backwards as I had hoped, but forwards, collapsing his weight onto me. It was literally dead weight and I had never come to appreciate the term until just then. I struggled beneath him, covered in his gore, smelling his stench of death, the body odor of days he must have spent in some ramshackle apartment assembling the biological agent he’d intended to use, but hadn’t gotten the chance.

  I managed to reach my radio eventually and call my team. It was twenty minutes before they found me. Twenty minutes I’d spent in that room, with that man. Afterwards, I had gone to therapy during office hours, but I’d never been able to share what had happened with Claire. I couldn’t explain away the nightmares and waking up screaming and why I couldn’t watch the television shows I had once enjoyed. And so it became a rift between us. Not because of those things in particular, but because I’d begun to shut her out. I had to condition myself to lie to her and somehow, at some level, she knew.

  So, in that day that I hid in Max Donovan’s private washroom, holding the Glock in my hand, I found that I was less than inclined to use it. Feared what would happen if I did. So, I pocketed the pistol and stepped out of the bathroom stall to confront him.

  Max was looking in the mirror when I first spoke and you would have thought he’d just been contacted by a spirit from the great beyond.

  “Max.”

  He jumped and spun toward me, eyes wide with shock.

  “Holy shit…” he wheezed. “You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing in here?”

  This last part was said with a twist of anger. Max had seemed to be a decent man. Or so I thought. But there were areas that you dared not tread. You didn’t read his private files and apparently you weren’t supposed to hide in his private bathroom. At least now I knew.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked, leveling a glare at him.

  “What are you—?”

  “Do you know me?” I asked, my voice hard.

  “N-no, what—?”

  “I work for a covert, domestic anti-terror unit,” I said. “We hunt down the traitors within our borders who would sell our country’s secrets. People like you…”

  I let the statement hang in the air between us for a moment before I c
ontinued. I took a step closer, hands in my pockets. I was at ease, this was what I did. Negotiation was my forte. I was no field agent. I was a headhunter and I knew how to talk to people.

  “I work for Blackthorn, Inc.” I said. “And Randall Kendrick is looking to burn your ass.”

  “Randall Kendrick?” Max said. He was trying to regain his footing. “Randall Kendrick is a—“

  He didn’t quite know how to finish the sentence so I helped him.

  “A liar, a con man and an employee of the federal government even though they’d deny it,” I said. “He posed as a buyer for the DHS files. Files you were more than willing to sell to him. I know. I have the documentation.”

  Max sputtered, looking for a place to land, safe ground.

  “No… no! That can’t be. My dealings with him have been…” Max began.

  “Your dealings have all been digitally recorded for the court proceedings. There are records and videotapes and audiotapes of your dealings with Kendrick. We know everything,” I said. I didn’t know if I was lying or not, but suspected that Kendrick had records of everything he had done, so why not this? Records could always disappear if Kendrick decided to pin the DHS breach on me or Max or both.

  “Kendrick is just an information broker,” Max said. “I checked him out.”

  “Randall Kendrick is an employee of the National Security Agency,” I shot back. This wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t entirely false either and I didn’t think Max would be able to split the hair to find the truth inside. Then to cap it off, “I work for him. I’ve been collecting information on you for the past two years.”

  Max was stunned.

  “What do you want from me?” Max asked. “I assume if this were an official visit you would have brought in the Feds and I’d have agents raiding my files right now…”

  “There’s a situation internally…” I said. I was trying to be cryptic for Max’s benefit. “We’re sorting it out.”

  “What kind of situation?” Max asked.

  “Kendrick overstepped bounds. He handled the questioning of witnesses. Specifically Chris Swenson. Chris was a friend of mine. There’s some concern about Kendrick’s methods. Torture… intimidation… Those concerns carry over to his investigation of you and your dealings,” I said.

  “So, what are you saying?” Max asked.

  “I’m saying cover your ass. Watch your six. Beware of what’s going on behind your back. Kendrick is not a friend to you. For that matter, he’s no friend to me either.”

  I was trying to point suspicion over Chris’ death back in Kendrick’s direction. Moreover, if I could separate Max and Kendrick and turn them against each other, I might be able to slip out of the middle, rather than having them both after me.

  “What do you want me to do?” Max asked.

  “Lock everything down,” I said. “Get your files to a safe location before Kendrick comes after them. Make sure you have everything and that nothing’s missing, because when the time comes, Kendrick’s going to point fingers at you whether you’re guilty or not.”

  Max was nodding, absorbing what I was telling him.

  “What about you?” he asked finally. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to talk to the Director of the NSA,” I said. “I’m going to get this sorted out. I’m your only chance to make sure that Kendrick doesn’t railroad you on this under the Patriot Act. He will try to absolutely crucify you.”

  In truth, Max deserved to be crucified. In the public square preferably. He had taken government secrets and tried to sell them to a private buyer. That was a breach of national security. But if I could make Max believe that I was on his side, that Kendrick was the threat and not me, I might have a chance.

  Max stepped back, leaving me a path to his door.

  “I understand,” He said. “Will you be in touch?”

  “You can reach me on my cell phone,” I replied. “I’m going to contact the Director today.”

  I strode past Max, making a line for the door.

  “Thank you for coming to me about this,” Max said behind me. I turned back. “You didn’t have to… Thank you for that.”

  I nodded and walked out of his office.

  I’d have to move quickly and that meant I needed to find Jessica. She had begun to take after me and come into the office early. I checked my watch. She could arrive anytime. I made my way to the company lunch room. As I had suspected, she was making coffee. Not that she drank coffee. She drank tea. But I drank coffee and she made it for me. This had been our thing. She took care of me in her ways and I took care of her in mine. A week ago she’d been dying for a little chocolate. I happened to have a box of Belgian truffles in my drawer. She practically blushed when I gave it to her.

  I walked into the small kitchen and said ‘hi’. She smiled warmly and not for the first time, I wanted to kiss her right there, at the office. I didn’t of course. But I would have. I stepped around her and stood so that I could see the door.

  “I need to tell you something,” I began.

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?” Jessica asked. She took so much in stride, never seeming to be rattled by anything.

  “Remember that file you found?” I asked.

  She turned and looked at me, her green eyes open, probing mine.

  “The DHS files?” she asked. I nodded.

  “This is all confidential,” I said. “Max is being investigated for stealing DHS secrets. He used Chris Swenson to do it and he was planning on selling the secrets, but he picked the wrong guy to sell them to. Now Chris has been murdered.”

  I whispered this last bit, but Jessica’s hand still flew to her mouth as she gasped in shock. She looked as if she was going to be ill.

  “Murdered?” She said the word in the same hushed reverence that I had, then turned and looked over her shoulder as if the mere mention of the word was grounds for charges being filed. I could only nod.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  And that was it. The kicker. The other shoe dropping. How did I fit in? Was there any way to explain it? I began to tell her. Everything. There was no point in holding back, in shading the truth. I told her about Claire. Some things that she knew, most that she did not. I told her about getting out of Blackthorn, about Kendrick pushing me to work for Donovan, how he used me as his point man to investigate the DHS situation. Now Chris was dead and he was likely to implicate me.

  “I need to see the Director of the NSA,” I explained. “I can set things right. Max knows the investigation is coming, but has let me go so that I can try fix this thing before it gets worse. I need to go, Jess. This place isn’t safe for me. For all I know, this place isn’t safe for you either.”

  I saw something in her eyes then, something behind the tears that had begun to form. A withdrawal of sorts. I could feel it before she said a word. She was pulling back from me.

  “Jess, I want you to come with me… to get out of here…” And before I finished my sentence, she was already shaking her head. She breathed in sobs.

  “I can’t… I can’t…” she said. Then she looked at me. “Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t know you. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I always thought I could trust you until this. I can’t…” She struggled for words, but they didn’t come to her.

  “Jess, I’m sorry…” I said.

  “When Frank left me… after I lost the baby…” Jessica said, “he enlisted in active duty in the Army. He’d been in the National Guard here in Illinois. When things didn’t work out with us, he wanted to get away from me.”

  She choked out a humorless laugh and wiped her tears.

  “I guess Iraq is about as far away from me as a man can get,” she said. “He’s committed his life to serving this country. He’s on his third tour now. I don’t think that what he’s doing is wrong, Simon… I just don’t want to watch another man get taken away from me…”

  Before I could say anything else, Jessica turned and left. I watched h
er go and knew in my gut that what she was doing was right. Maybe not right for me. Maybe it didn’t help my cause. But maybe it was right for her. I swallowed hard and looked at my shoes. My heart was breaking for her leaving. I was alone now. I had to go. I pushed my emotions aside and began to walk.

  I stepped into an empty cubicle and slumped into the chair. I logged in under my password and instead of being met with the welcome screen, the desktop computer spat back a flat buzz. I looked closer and the screen read that my password had been rejected. I huffed and focused and retyped. I was probably just distracted. Again, the buzz. Invalid password.

  Just then, Tom Ellis stormed past the cubicle without seeing me and made a line for Max Donovan’s office. I’d grown to know that Tom was one of the most even-tempered people I’d ever met. Strange.

  I entered my username and password again, this time typing in the exaggerated hunt-and-peck style. I knew I typed it in correctly. Still, I received the error sound. My password wasn’t working... Tom was running to Max’s office… with a file in his hand…

  I decided that it would be best if I got out of the building sooner rather than later. I could always sort out things on my own time, but inside corporate walls, your time is not your own. I got up and headed for the elevators. I was nearly there when the doors opened and two security guards exited, talking to each other. Unlike most security guards who are dressed like pseudo-policemen, our guards wore navy blazers and gray pants. The giveaway was usually the shoes. Few security guards liked wearing leather shoes for all the amount of patrol time they spent on the floors. Often they opted for black athletic shoes. These guys were better than most, but the fact that they matched each other perfectly was a giveaway.

  I sidestepped into the copy room and moved away from the door. I saw them pass. I didn’t want to retrace my steps so I opened the door at the far end of the copy room and entered the conference room. The shades were drawn. I could wait a few moments and duck out of there. Then I heard Max’s voice.