Divide & Conquer

by McDonald, Murray

  “Bastards!” he blurted aloud.

  Sean gently pushed Katie aside as he dialed Vincent’s number. He opened the nearest door and walked into a room fit for a four-year-old boy. Sean’s photos lined the wall and had pride of place next to the small single bed. James hero-worshipped the dead Sean. Most of the photos were of Sean in his military uniforms, adding to the bizarreness of the situation.

  With his focus firmly back on the task at hand, he hit the dial button.

  “Err, hello?” came a sleepy voice on the other end of the call.

  “You didn’t go to my funeral, you prick!” blurted Sean. He had promised himself he wouldn’t say anything but hearing Vincent’s voice stirred up too many emotions. Sean really did look on him as a father and finding out that he had abandoned him was not easy. Particularly when he was sat on the bed of a young boy who hero-worshipped pictures of him.

  “Sean, is that you?”

  “Who the fuck else do you know whose funeral you didn’t go to?” replied Sean, barely containing his anger.

  “But it wasn’t you!”

  “You thought it was!”

  “Well…”

  “Don’t even try and suggest otherwise, you paid her my pension!”

  Game, set and match.

  “I’m sorry,” said Vincent, any hint of fight had gone from his voice. “I have regretted that decision, every second for the last three months.” He answered with all his heart.

  Although Sean was furious, he could tell that Vincent was being sincere. “Don’t think I’ll be going to yours!” threatened Sean, half-heartedly.

  “At least that’s how it should be. You should bury me, not the other way around.”

  Sean realized then, from the sincerity and truthfulness in Vincent’s voice, just how hard it had been for him over the previous three months. The anger faded and with it any doubt as to what he needed to do. All thoughts of the beach were shelved. There was a young boy in danger.

  “Truce?” offered Sean.

  “Absolutely!” replied Vincent, a bounce back in his voice. Sean was alive and well and being his usual pain in the ass self.

  “I’m not forgiving you about the pension, though! Don’t think I don’t know what that means,” threatened Sean. Vincent had not terminated Sean’s contract with the CIA, eighteen months earlier.

  Vincent mumbled something inaudibly in response which Sean ignored; it would have been some bullshit lie about a clerical error.

  “I need some help.”

  “Just say the word and you’re back on the payroll!” offered Vincent cheerily. “I’ll have a team with you in four hours.”

  “I’m fine on my own, thanks. Anyway, I thought I still was on the team,” replied Sean sarcastically.

  “Right up until we thought you were dead! Payroll are a little pedantic about things like that.”

  “I need to know where a call came from.”

  “You know I can’t…”

  “Seriously, don’t even think about it, I’m this close to disowning you!”

  “Give me the number, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I don’t have the number, just the IMEI number of the phone and the serial number of the SIM card that received the call.”

  “Jesus, you never did make things easy. Give them to me and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Sean repeated both numbers twice to ensure Vincent had written them down correctly.

  “Oh, one last thing,” asked Sean as they were about to end the call. “Any idea what the Russians are doing involved in this?”

  “Did you say the Russians?” replied Vincent quizzically and with some confusion.

  “Yep, two Russians came in here, guns blazing. I’d swear a hit team saw me and bugged out. Suggested I get the wife and kid and disappear.”

  “Russians?! What the…” contemplated Vincent. “I have no idea. So what are you doing with the wife and son?”

  Sean realized then that Vincent didn’t know about the kidnap. So much had happened in such a short space of time.

  “The wife’s here and thinks I’m suffering from Post Traumatic Stress and the son has been kidnapped by the Mexicans.”

  “Jesus, are the FBI on it?”

  “It happened in front of me. I chased the kidnappers to the border. I phoned the FBI but wasn’t sure if they’d be a help or a hindrance. I’ve a feeling there’s an awful lot of dirty money flowing around down here. I decided to keep it to myself.”

  “The local police?”

  “Nope, just me!”

  “I’ll be with you in four hours!” replied Vincent firmly.

  “No,” Sean almost shouted. “I’m better on my own. If I need bodies, I’ll give you a shout. In the meantime, I need to know where that call came from and everything about the Mexicans and who the other Sean worked for, particularly any American contacts, it seems that’s what the Mexicans are after.”

  “I’m on it…but Russians?” he pondered again as he ended the call. Their involvement had obviously fazed him more than the kidnapping of young James Fox.

  As Sean stood up, a burgundy baseball cap hanging on the far wall of the bedroom caught his eye, the Native American image proudly adorning its brow, one he was all too familiar with - The Washington Redskins, Sean’s team. A number of other Washington Redskin paraphernalia adorned the desk below the cap that was proudly displayed on the wall. Why, of all teams, would the boy support the Redskins? The team Sean had spent his childhood watching with his father. Sean began to wonder if he really was suffering from post-traumatic stress. The boy looked like him, the dead Sean was his double and he had to admit if he were ever going to settle down and get married, Katie Fox pretty much fit the bill. Perhaps he really had lost his mind.

  “Sean!”

  Sean heard Katie’s desperate shout and snapped back to reality. There had been another Sean Fox. He wasn’t going mad and hadn’t lost his mind but it did mean there was one more action point beyond getting the boy - finding out just who the other Sean Fox had been.

  Sean got up and joined Katie in the hallway, extremely agitated and gesticulating wildly towards the front of the house. “The Mexicans,” she struggled to get the words out, tears were flowing again. “A truck just pulled up outside!”

  As the front door crashed open, Sean grabbed his Glock only to realize he’d left it downstairs.

  “Shit!”

  Chapter 22

  As Vincent relayed the IMEI and SIM numbers to one of his duty managers, he couldn’t stop thinking about Sean’s last words.

  Vincent had looked into every detail of Sean’s Fox life from the day he had walked out on the NCS. Rumors were abound that he was working in Afghanistan, he was in Iraq, he was body-guarding a Saudi Prince. Only after his death did they find the truth, or at least what they thought was the truth. He was working as a gun for hire for one of America’s largest drug smugglers.

  A number of pieces, of course, had not fit: the marriage, the birth of a son, all of it kept hidden, nobody knew anything of the wife Katie or son James. Vincent Black was the closest thing to family that Sean Fox had had and yet had been unaware of Sean’s marriage or son. It had been the most bizarre of findings but everything fit. Katie’s story fitted with Sean’s pattern of work, times and dates. When he was in country coincided pretty much with her memories of him being at home. His rehabilitation period, everything fit.

  The move to Laredo and job with Fat Jake coincided with Sean’s resignation. Sean Fox, one of the CIA’s most decorated spies had led a double life. It was of course exactly as he had been trained, he just wasn’t supposed to play that trick on his master and certainly not on the man who looked on him as his own, Vincent Black. The deceit had hit as hard as the death had and had left Vincent with a very tainted memory of a man he had treated as a son. Vincent knew it was the deceit that kept him from the funeral and nothing at all to do with the drugs. Nothing would have kept him from Sean’s funeral but it seemed, at the time, Vincent did
n’t know who was being buried; it certainly hadn’t been the Sean he had known and loved, not the Sean he had held as a baby, less than a day old under the watchful gaze of his best friend and proud father, James Fox.

  Vincent and James had met at WestPoint and although they were rivals for just about every competition the Officer Training Academy had on offer, James was always victorious. James Fox was a star amongst stars. Nobody doubted that he would, one day, become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief military officer in the United States; it was just that nobody predicted he would do it so young. Certainly it was inconceivable that anyone in their forties could rise so high so fast but James Fox proved them wrong. Being 'the youngest’ could just about be tagged to everything he had ever achieved: youngest Major, youngest Colonel, youngest General. Had it not been for the year of his birth coinciding with James Fox, Vincent Black would have graduated top of his class with the highest scores in the history of WestPoint. Instead, he was destined to be the graduate who finished just behind James Fox, the institution’s most outstanding cadet ever.

  However, such was the bond the two had created, Vincent did not grudge James one ounce of his success or achievements. In fact, thanks to James, Vincent found his niche and moved, rather than into the army itself, straight into the intelligence business where he raced through the ranks, almost as fast as James had in the army. It was there, within the Central Intelligence Agency, that Vincent had found his calling and rose to the rank of Director of Clandestine Services.

  Twenty-five years had passed since the worst day of Vincent’s life. The call had come into him at eleven pm. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had been involved in a car crash, his friend James Fox was dead, killed instantly. James’ wife Myriam was hanging on but chances were slim to nil. Vincent had rushed to the hospital and found fifteen year old Sean Fox lost and helpless, staring at the door that led to his mom. Vincent took him by the shoulders and both walked in. Myriam’s eyes opened briefly and seeing her handsome son, she mouthed the words 'I love you’ and gave a look to Vincent that was the clearest message he had ever received. 'Look after my baby’. Myriam’s eyes closed and never reopened. She knew her son would be OK.

  Each and every time he thought of that moment over the last three months, he had hated himself. Not going to Sean’s funeral would have haunted him for the rest of his life.

  Vincent became Sean’s guardian and although they set off on a rocky footing - a recently orphaned teenager was no easy introduction to parenting - as time passed, they became more friends than parent and son. Sean was a chip off his father’s block, a natural athlete, intelligent and stubborn, a perfect candidate for WestPoint. The only setback was that Sean had no intention of following in his father’s footsteps. Sean wanted action. WestPoint was for desk jockeys, for guys who wanted to play soldiers. Sean wanted to be a soldier. After an extremely difficult year of frayed relations, an agreement was reached. Sean could go in as a grunt but only if he attended college first. Vincent was immovable on the point; an education was the least he could assure Sean’s parents.

  With the war in the Gulf kicking off and the wall falling in Berlin, Sean chose to study the Middle East and Arabic. A champion in various sporting activities, he had his choice of universities with full scholarships and chose Harvard. It, he assured Vincent, had the best program for what he wanted to do. However, it was the only university in the country which did not offer Sean a scholarship. Sean’s junior American kick boxing crown, his quarterback of the year award and swimming titles were all meaningless, especially to Vincent’s bank account which was about to take a pummeling. Sean, it seemed, was going to teach Vincent a very expensive lesson. If he interfered, it would cost him and cost him dearly.

  Sean graduated top of his class and had recruiters knocking at his door. Six figure starting salaries and offers to pay off all of his loans flooded in. Vincent fielded a number of the calls, although Sean was happy to leave them to the answering machine. He had only one plan. On the day of graduation, he walked out of the hall and straight into the nearest army recruiting station. From there, he became one of the most over qualified soldiers to walk through the doors. Despite numerous calls to convince him to enter WestPoint, from pretty much every member of the Chiefs of Staff, the son of WestPoint’s greatest ever graduate and youngest Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, entered basic training with an Option 40 contract for the Rangers. Sean sailed through basic training, airborne training and the Rangers Indoctrination Program. A tour of duty followed before he was finally installed in Ranger School. Sixty-one days later and proudly displaying his yellow and black Rangers tab, Sean posted his application for 1st SFOD-D, Delta Force.

  Seeing Sean graduate from Ranger school was one of Vincent’s proudest moments. The young boy whom he had watched turn into a man was now a fully-fledged Special Forces warrior. The application to Delta was just another surprise that Sean had managed to pull out of the hat and six months later, Vincent was standing once again proudly at Sean’s passing out parade. This time most definitely his last, unless of course the army created a more elite fighting force which Vincent knew was impossible. Delta Force were the best.

  As the decade drew to a close, Vincent began to look at retiring. The world had changed, the Soviet threat had given way to, as predicted by Sean and his degree choice, fundamentalist Islam. Having been involved in the intelligence world for over 40 years, it was time to hang up his boots and retire. On Friday 7th September 2001, Vincent Black, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Clandestine Services and one of her longest serving officers, retired. Sean surprised Vincent once again, announcing at his retirement party that although Vincent was leaving, his memory would live on within the Agency he held so dear. Particularly, as he, Sean, would be making sure nobody forgot Vincent Black as long as he was a member of the CIA, the Agency he would be joining the following week.

  Vincent had tried many times to recruit Sean. His background, training and linguistic skills were perfect for the agency’s Middle Eastern section and Sean would have been a great asset to the team and would have been the perfect successor for himself. However, just as Sean had resisted West Point, he had also resisted the Agency, or at least as long as Vincent were there.

  Vincent knew it wasn’t personal. Sean was his own man and had no intention of being in anyone’s shadow. At West Point, he would constantly have been rated against his father’s scores. Not reaching them would have been failure, beating them would have felt somehow disrespectful. Likewise, if he had joined the Agency while Vincent were there, he would have been questioned as to whether he deserved to be there, or was it just because Vincent Black had got him in.

  The following week everything changed. The twin towers came down and Vincent, at the request of the President, was back at the CIA, heading up, again, its Clandestine Services division which Sean had just joined. With the twin towers still smoldering, Sean was in no position to change his mind and was preparing for his first tour in Afghanistan as the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban was launched in reprisal.

  Ever since Vincent had been brought back into the CIA, he had been planning his exit. Sean Fox would be an excellent Director of CS but unfortunately Sean proved too valuable in the field and every time Vincent felt the time was right, another war would break out - Iraq, the surge in Afghanistan. Political upheaval in the Middle East. Sean was needed on the front line, not behind a desk. However, all those plans were dealt a fatal blow thanks to the Senior Senator from Oklahoma and his latest young squeeze. The squeeze was, unfortunately, a very ambitious investigative reporter who, on hearing the news of an undercover operation that would capture Al Qaeda’s number two, broke the story. Unfortunately, she broke it before the operation had actually launched. Unaware of the leak, Sean’s team launched the operation and barely managed to get out with three fatalities and a list of injuries that would mean only Sean and two others out of the ten members of the team would ever live a normal life.
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  Vincent had called for the senator’s head but he was a massive money generator for the President and so received nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Vincent vowed he’d bring the man down one day but Sean made his feelings very clear and no amount of persuasion would change his mind. He would never work for the 'fuckers’ again. After the six months of rehabilitation and witnessing the Senior Senator from Oklahoma being appointed Chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Committee, Sean left the CIA and government service. Watching Sean leave the office with a small cardboard box under his arm was, as Vincent recalled, one of the most distressing days of his life.

  For the next fifteen months, they had little contact. Sean called irregularly to say hi but never said where he was or what he was doing. Vincent tried to keep track but Sean had so many different aliases and documents, it was a full time job to try and keep up with his whereabouts. Eventually, Vincent accepted the inevitable and moved on. Sean needed time to get over what had happened, if he ever would.

  Vincent, for what seemed the nth time in his life, put his personal life on hold. He had a country to protect. He had nearly been married twice, the first coincided with the car crash and it seemed while Vincent was ready to step up and take on the responsibility of a grief stricken fifteen year old, his fun loving fiancée was not. However, as far as Sean knew, it just didn’t work out and was none the wiser as to why all of a sudden uncle Vincent’s girlfriend disappeared. He had far more important emotional issues to deal with. The second and more recent engagement was collateral damage from 9/11. With his retirement in tatters and back working 18-hour days, his fiancée, who was going to love and cherish him in to his old age, decided she couldn’t really do that if he wasn’t around. Over seventy, he had resigned himself to dying a bachelor, married to his country which he had loved, honored and obeyed with all his heart despite its indiscretions, for which it was always forgiven. Something Sean could not do.