Trident's First Gleaming

by Stephen Templin

  “Look how happy you are,” Hannah said.

  “Do I look happy?” he asked.

  “Like a sailor in a whorehouse.”

  “I just realized how much I miss shooting.” He smiled as he prepared to shoot again.

  “I’ll be to the left of the berm killing steel, amigo. Smoke ’em.” She walked away to shoot steel targets in the adjacent shooting bay.

  Now that Chris could hit the paper at twenty-five meters, it was easier to do the real business of zeroing at one hundred meters. After repeating the process of shooting, examining his hits, and adjusting his sights, he finished zeroing his rifle at one hundred meters. His barrel, like most barrels, slanted at an upward angle to compensate for the immediate drop of the round leaving the muzzle. The rifle’s outer covering appeared straight, but the actual barrel inside slanted up. As a result, the round would travel from low to high and then drop low again, like traveling the arc of a rainbow.

  As a child, he’d always been fascinated by firearms. Owning a BB gun had reinforced that fascination, but as an adult in BUD/S training, he’d outshot his classmates, and he’d thought he might have a gift. When he’d outgunned his SEAL instructor in a contest, he’d realized he had a special skill. Not only did he enjoy shooting, but his gift filled him with grand pride. Deep down, he felt a spiritual connection to firearms. But after becoming a preacher, he’d forgotten all that. Now the skill, pride and spiritual connection came back to him.

  At the initial arc of the rainbow, his bullet would now strike a couple inches low at twenty-five meters. It’d rise to dead-on at one hundred meters, and the bullet would drop a few inches low at two hundred meters. At three hundred meters, he’d have to aim for the enemy’s neck in order to hit him in the gut.

  Chris fired out to the various targets kneeling and standing. Next, he shot on the move, practicing reloads as he went and throwing in some malfunction drills for good measure. When he was satisfied, he did the same with his pistol out to fifty meters. Then Chris joined Hannah. He mostly shot steel with his rifle but did some transitions into shooting pistol. Next, Hannah took him to a range where the steel moved: disappeared, appeared, panned left, and panned right. He shot better than she did, but he wasn’t shooting as well as he used to.

  When the sun dropped out of the sky, Chris mounted a light to his rifle. He became so absorbed in shooting that he lost track of time. Hannah went into the truck and dug into the supplies for food; he thought he’d shoot for a little longer before grabbing a bite himself, but soon he forgot about eating, too. While Hannah rested in the vehicle, he continued to squeeze the trigger until he ran out of bullets. He dumped the empty ammo boxes into a trash barrel.

  Chris placed his weapons into the SUV, waking Hannah. She rubbed her eyes and adjusted her seat forward.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  He nodded and climbed into the passenger seat, not saying a word. He needed more time at the range, but time was the one thing they didn’t have.

  He could feel her eyes on him. “Okay, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  Chris remained quiet.

  She started up the SUV. “Is it one of your weapons?”

  “No,” he replied. “Weapons are Jedi level.”

  Hannah pulled out of the shooting bay and left the firing range. “The ammo?”

  “It’s me,” Chris said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My shooting.”

  “You were smoother than me. Smooth is fast,” she said.

  She was right about the importance of shooting smoothly. Chris had been in numerous gunfights where his opponent had acted more quickly but Chris’s efficiency of motion and exacting aim—smoothness—had killed his enemy before his enemy had killed him. Even so, Chris had once faced an enemy who was equally smooth, and in that situation, Chris had only survived because his opponent’s smooth actions were slower than his. “Smooth is fast, but slow is dead.” His head ached, and his body felt warm, almost feverish. “I’m not near enough the shooter I used to be. And there’s no more time to close the gap.”

  “You’ll figure out a way to close the gap. You always do.” She reached over and patted his hand.

  Chris closed his eyes as she drove, but he couldn’t rest. And he couldn’t shake the dark cloud of discouragement that hovered over him.

  It was late when they arrived back at the Agency in Langley. They unloaded their gear, bagged and tagged it so it could be loaded on the plane with the rest of their kit for a military flight out ahead of them. Chris and the others would be flying under civilian cover, so if his weapons, explosives, comms, and other black gear were sent to the wrong place, he wouldn’t find out until they arrived in their area of operations.

  Once the task was completed, Hannah drove them to their hotel in nearby Hampton. The pair entered the hotel and took the elevator to the fifth floor, where both their rooms were.

  They stopped in the hall outside Chris’s room. He didn’t want to go in alone, but he wanted to do the right thing and say good night. He searched his mind for some middle ground but found none. While he thought about what to say, the silence grew more and more awkward.

  “Thank you,” he finally said. “For today.” He tried to think of something else. “And for this mission.” He was sincere about his gratitude for her, but he wasn’t sure about the mission, especially after his performance on the firing range. Despite his concern, there was no turning back now.

  7

  _______

  In the evening, in the port city of Latakia, Syria, a middle-aged Chinese intelligence officer named Bo Geng strolled behind a twenty-something curvaceous prostitute called Farah. She led him into a cheap, dilapidated hotel. Although prostitution was officially illegal in Syria, the police turned a blind eye. Most of the women, like Farah, were from Iraq, refugees unable to work legally in Syria, so they turned to hustling. Others were pressured by family members in Iraq to become call girls in Syria. Their customers came from all over the Middle East, where moral codes were much stricter. Bo had paid the equivalent of four hundred dollars for an evening with her.

  Before stepping inside the hotel, he looked for any signs of police or his own intelligence agency. He’d been filing false reports for more money and time to spend on Farah, and he was in no hurry to return to China. And he was certainly in no hurry to spend time in a Syrian jail.

  Bo flipped the light switch, and cockroaches scurried across the dingy floor. The light was dim, but he could see well enough. He locked the door behind them.

  Most of the wallpaper in the room was missing, revealing a concrete wall that crumbled in patches. Large chips of the vinyl floor were gone, and long cracks formed a giant spider web. The bed frame was rusted, but the tattered sheets appeared clean.

  His eyes ravaged Farah from her scuffed knee-high boots to her frayed hip-hugging jeans to her tight, faded teal-colored T-shirt. She liked to suck in her gut, but it wasn’t enough of a gut to deter him. Even though her skin had a dirty complexion, he liked the darkness of it. He embraced her, but she pulled away and motioned for him to wait. Farah’s hands explored the outside of his trousers, stopping at his back left pocket, where he had a pair of handcuffs he’d used with her the night before.

  “So you want that again?” he asked in Arabic. His hands quivered with anticipation as he pulled out the handcuffs. The danger of being caught by Syrian authorities or Chinese intelligence increased his excitement.

  Farah smiled. From her worn handbag, she pulled out her own pair of handcuffs, raising the ante. Much of the black paint had rubbed off the metal, clearly used before, but they were new to him. If the police or his superiors busted through the door, he’d be hard-pressed to explain away what was happening. He was a fast runner, though.

  Bo felt a rise in his trousers. “What do you have in mind?”

  She sat on the bed and handcuffed one of her hands to a bent metal pole decorating the headboard. She giggled, and he quickly approached her to put
his handcuffs on her free hand.

  She motioned for him to stop.

  Is she teasing me? “What’s wrong?”

  “Handcuff yourself to the bed,” she said.

  “You are a creative woman,” he said. If I handcuff myself to the bed, there’ll be no running away. But the police and my chief have no reason to come here. I ran a surveillance detection route before coming here. No one knows I’m here. And I can handle Farah. He handcuffed his hand to the bed.

  Farah lay down on top of him, burying his face with her bosom, tantalizing him. She pressed herself hard against him until he couldn’t breathe. He thought he might suffocate, but Farah backed away, and he inhaled. Then she pummeled his face with her chest again. This time, with his free hand, he tried to pull up her shirt, but she moved away, escaping his grasp and allowing him to catch his breath. She unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers. Then Farah sandwiched Bo between her and the bed, but this time he could breathe and enjoy.

  Click. Bo’s other wrist was cuffed to the bed, and Farah’s hands were free. She smiled and pulled off his trousers. He was so aroused that his emperor was ready to enter the palace.

  “Now I want you to beg,” she said.

  “I’m not going to beg,” he said pompously, tugging at his cuffs.

  “No, you must beg.”

  “I’m not begging.”

  “I can see you need some time to think.” She giggled.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll beg.”

  “You better hurry.” Farah walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

  “Please. I’m begging.”

  “You don’t sound very sincere,” she said. “I’ll just freshen up while you become sincere.”

  “Please. I beg you.” He waited, but there was no reply. He heard the shower running. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I want you more than life itself. I’ll do anything for you.”

  “That’s more like it,” her voice called. The bathroom door opened.

  Bo grinned. Then a stranger appeared in the doorway. Bo’s grin dissolved.

  In the doorway stood a man with longish, black curly hair and a handsome face—he looked like a movie star. In his hand, he carried a brown leather satchel. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” the man said.

  The man gave her a fistful of money, and she put it in her jeans pocket, avoiding Bo’s gaze. She brushed past the stranger, grabbed her handbag, unlocked the door, and ran out of the hotel room.

  Once she was gone, the man locked the door again.

  “Who are you?” Bo asked.

  “That is not important now.” Condescension filled the man’s voice. “What is important is who you are.”

  “I am a businessman with China National Petroleum Corporation.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bo Geng. That is your cover story. I want you to tell me who you really work for.”

  Bo’s heart rate sped up, and he started to sweat. “What are you talking about?”

  “You are from the Ministry of State Security of the People’s Republic of China, no?”

  Bo didn’t like how the stranger talked down to him, and he felt that the stranger was talking down to China. “Who are you?” he spat.

  “I am the commander of Syria’s cyber warfare unit, but you should be asking ‘what do you want?’”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want what you want,” the stranger reasoned.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The stranger smiled. “I want to bring America to her knees. Maybe not for the same reasons, but we both want the same thing.”

  Bo looked at him, puzzled. “Who are you?”

  “I am the one who devours the souls of humans. The one who grows spiritually stronger with each bite. I am the one who will use the Switchblade Whisper to feast on America.” He stroked his satchel.

  Bo didn’t know what was inside it, and not knowing made his gut queasy. “I know nothing about any Switchblade Whisper.” His statement was partly true. He knew what the drone was and that the Syrians had brought it down, but he didn’t know where or why.

  The stranger smiled again. “One of my people betrayed me and sold information about my cyber-warfare unit to you. Of course, he is no longer with my unit, but you sent an encrypted message to your superiors.”

  Bo pulled against his handcuffs, and they rubbed against his skin and bones, but he couldn’t free himself.

  The man stepped closer to the bed. “We decoded your message. And you claimed you found a piece of the aircraft. I want to see the piece and know where you found it.”

  “I lied,” Bo said. “I lied so I could get more money. And so China wouldn’t send me home. I didn’t find anything.”

  “Is there anyone else looking for the Switchblade Whisper?” the stranger asked.

  Bo swallowed. “Chi Lee. He is with the PLA Special Forces.”

  “Is he working alone?”

  His hands flapped in the cuffs. The more he tried to ease them, the more they tried to take flight. “I don’t know.”

  The stranger stepped closer to the bed, his body pressing against it. “I believe that you have every reason to tell the truth. But I am not sure that you truly believe that.”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Bo said.

  The man stroked his hair like a new pet. “I believe you.”

  Bo recoiled out of disgust and whimpered. “Please unlock my handcuffs.”

  The stranger’s eyes were dark and void of emotion, like two black holes. “I have one more question: if Chi Lee does obtain the Switchblade Whisper, how does he plan to transport it to China?”

  Mentally, his nerves mixed in a blender. “I’m telling the truth—I don’t know. Please let me go.”

  “Okay, since you are not answering my last question, I will help you.” The man opened his satchel and pulled out a set of knives. “The small one is a paring knife, excellent for removing skin. Next, the long carving knife is used for slicing thin cuts of meat. Oh, maybe you will appreciate the irony of this next one.” He pointed to another blade. “A Chinese cleaver, used for chopping through bone. And the last is a boning knife, which does what its name implies.”

  Bo’s mouth was dry, and his head felt like it was on fire. Screaming, he yanked on his handcuffs.

  8

  _______

  In the morning, Chris, Hannah, Victor, and Jim Bob took separate routes to make sure they weren’t under surveillance by any of the foreign spies that often targeted Langley. After shaking any tails and making sure they were “clean,” they would rendezvous at the Montreal-Trudeau Airport, where they’d assume their new identities.

  Unlike traveling abroad, Chris was on his home turf and had the advantage of blending in more easily and noticing anyone who exhibited a marked appearance or behavior—such as a foreign operative whose dress was too casual or too formal in comparison to the other people in his environment, a commuting salary man without a bored look on his face, or anything else out of the norm. Also to his benefit, surveillance would probably only be solo or a small team rather than a large team, such as the KGB used in Russia during the Cold War to observe suspected CIA officers.

  Chris took a taxi to a nearby hotel, briskly walked in the front door, and quickly walked out the back. If enemy agents were following him, they’d struggle to keep up. He didn’t want to be obvious and turn around to look for a tail, so he checked the window reflections. No one suspicious. So far, so good.

  From the rear of the hotel, Chris hailed another taxi. As he sat down and told the driver where to take him, he observed the hotel door to see if anyone came out. When the taxi driver pulled away from the curb, the hotel door remained still.

  No surveillance vehicles seemed to pursue, but Chris remained alert as his taxi dropped him off at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport—the busier the airport, the easier it was to disappear into an ocean of people. DC was also a hotbed for spies, so the farther from DC, the better. From there, he flew to New
York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Inside JFK, Chris switched carriers and hopped on a plane to Montreal, Canada.

  In a restroom stall of the Montreal-Trudeau Airport, he changed into a green polo shirt with Adventure Tours embroidered on the left breast. He proceeded to the security gate, where he showed his navy blue Canadian passport with his alias—Chris Grey—written inside. He placed his wallet on the counter between them. In it, he had a Montreal driver’s license, Visa card issued by Canadian Tire, a business card with working phone number and email address that the Agency manned daily, and a Tim Hortons card, the Dunkin’ Donuts of Canada. In his carry-on, there was a Canadian edition of the Bible and some business papers.

  After passing through security, he found a seat in the Swiss International Airlines lobby near the gate for Zurich, the next stop on their circuitous journey to Latakia, Syria. Chris wore the face of any other tired traveler, but he maintained situational awareness, watching out for anything that didn’t belong.

  Hannah arrived at the gate, wearing her green Adventure Tours shirt, carrying a drink, and strutting as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But Chris knew better—Hannah was switched on, too. She sat down next to him. Any moment, Victor and Jim Bob were due to arrive wearing their Adventure Tours shirts, too.

  Hannah took a sip from her straw. “You ever know a shooting instructor named Ron Hickok?” she asked randomly.

  Ron was the toughest SEAL instructor Chris had had at BUD/S. Later, he’d taken an honorable discharge from the Navy and opened a gun school called the Blaze Ranch for military and law enforcement personnel and US citizens. Teaching guns was his true destiny. Before he’d agreed to teach Chris beyond the advanced levels, he’d sworn Chris to secrecy. Chris hadn’t understood why, but he’d wanted to learn, so he’d agreed not to talk about his training. “Is there anyone in our business who doesn’t know Ron?”