Joint Task Force #3: France

by David E. Meadows

  The letter opener slid further down until it was in his palm. Kurt gripped the handle, taking a deep breath at the same time.

  Hampshire looked up at his face. “What’s the matter, asshole. Scared? Don’t be. I’m not interested in killing someone who’s going to meet me tomorrow with another fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “You said ten,” Kurt blurted, his eyes wide.

  Hampshire laughed, tilting his head back.

  Kurt shoved the letter opener up, toward the exposed neck of the laughing devil. He shifted his entire two hundred and eighty pounds onto his right leg, putting every bit of energy that fear could produce behind the flashing letter opener.

  The silver tip entered Hampshire’s neck just above his Adam’s apple. It traveled through the skin and into the throat, stopping a half-inch shy of the spine.

  Kurt dropped his hand. The flat end, with a small hole for hanging it up in your cubicle that only Mary Smith ever used, protruded from Hampshire’s neck, blood spurting around it. Kurt took a few steps back as Hampshire stumbled around the small office, his hands flailing at the letter opener, a gurgling sound—probably blood filling his throat, thought Kurt, surprised at his own lack of emotion and impressed with his ability to observe scientifically the man drowning in his own blood.

  Hampshire fell to his knees. At that moment, he looked up, his eyes pleading with Kurt. Hampshire’s right hand slapped a couple of times on the letter opener.

  Kurt shifted closer to the door.

  Hampshire gurgled toward Kurt.

  “Hampshire,” Kurt said softly. He reached up, quickly unbuttoned his shirt, and pulled it apart. “Fat boy doesn’t have a money belt.” He laughed, staring at Hampshire’s eyes. He had never killed anyone. A year ago if someone had told him he was capable of killing someone he would have laughed. He wasn’t one of those military types who wandered the halls of the Navy Annex and the Pentagon, showing their notches to each other, scoring the number of kills against their ranks.

  Hampshire’s eyes were losing their sparkle. Kurt had read of this and now he was going to see it. Hampshire’s hand fell by his side and his torso started a slow fall forward. Kurt watched, disappointed that he didn’t see the last of the light disappear from the eyes.

  The body thudded when it hit the floor, dust swirls rising around the head and chest. For a cleaning room, it sure is dirty. Kurt bit his lower lip, mentally patting himself on the back for being so calm. He took a deep breath and waited. He didn’t move forward to check the body and make sure Hampshire was dead. Kurt watched the chest, satisfied it wasn’t moving up and down, satisfied the man wasn’t still breathing. He was curiously proud of his actions. He could stand in the center courtyard of the Pentagon now and when the senior officer Ground Zero Cigar Club made their parade every few days with their halo of smoke, he could hold up one finger. They wouldn’t know what it was about, but it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t going to happen. He was going to be sunning himself on some beach with a couple of paid-for escorts taking care of his every whim.

  The dust settled around Hampshire, providing a skin over the pool of blood that had spread around the dead man’s head. Kurt worried for a fraction of a second what would happen if the blood soaked through the floor and dripped on some unsuspecting young woman working intently on the floor below. Then, he quit worrying. Even if it did, it would take more time than was remaining in the day for the blood to work its way through the tile, the insulation, and whatever else existed between floors.

  Kurt opened the door, stepped into the silent hallway, and pulled the door shut behind him. It’ll be Monday before they find the body.

  “KURT!”

  He nearly dropped the CD teetering on the edge of his classified computer. Kurt glanced over the top of the cubicle wall at the clock, his lower lip pushed against the upper. He would have jumped regardless of the fact that a dead body, which he created, lay lifeless less than a hundred yards from where he sat.

  The shout came from the direction of the exit door. Four-thirty, the clock read. Time really flies when you’re having fun, he thought sarcastically. He laughed. What a bunch of fools.

  Kurt placed the CD alongside the keyboard, covering it with his left hand while his right searched the drawer for a plastic sleeve.

  Leave it to his fellow government workers to beat the door down in a mad rush to climb into cars so they could idle in gridlock on the Washington, D.C. beltways. At least, even on his last day of government service, he was sensible enough to use public transportation.

  Kurt started to stand to glance over the six-foot cubicle wall to see if the colonel was in his office, but his hips caught on the arms of the chair. Rather than exhaust energy wiggling free, he told himself, What the hell. Why should I worry about someone who I will never see again? Someone who will never know that thanks to his encouragement, I’ve made a fortune that will keep me happy for the rest of my life.

  Kurt had seen military officers come and go in the Missile Research Defense Agency—Mister DA, as the yuppie assholes coming into government service liked to call it. Mister DA. It was enough to make him throw up every time he heard it used.

  He tried to listen to any noise coming from the direction of the colonel’s office. He thought about looking again. It wouldn’t be hard to see if the man was still here, but he knew that he was without verifying it. This military leader had a sharper edge on his “A-type” personality than most. It was probably titanium-tipped, fueled by a growing ego and tenacious ambition to have so many stars on his shoulders that he’d need helpers to hold him up from the weight.

  This colonel was so hell-bent on the Air Force recognizing his dedication with a one-star rank, he rode those beneath him relentlessly. “Team, I’m disappointed. Where are those statistics I asked for earlier? It’s been nearly thirty minutes, so get the lead out of your asses and get them to me. We don’t want to disappoint the boss.” What a crock of sh—well, it was a crock full. The only team was me, myself, and I. Everyone else was a cog in the man’s ambition for stardom. Kurt laughed. Stardom—I’ve made a pun and didn’t even know it.

  No, Colonel Darnell—of the Darnells of Calvert County, home of the jumping frogs—wouldn’t be heading out the door, Kurt thought. He wondered for a moment where the colonel really came from. If he knew, he’d send the town a condolence note when he got to Aruba.

  Kurt knew Darnell would stay in the office until the summer sun set. The only time the man wasn’t at his desk or having his nose halfway up some superior’s mile-wide sphincter canyon was when he was taking his two-hour PT/lunch break, which was very fortuitous today.

  No, Darnell never left early on Friday. Friday was a chance to excel for his superiors. While his peers were turning off their computers and gathering up their stuff for a weekend home with their families, Darnell would be sending out a bunch of email updates to his superiors and to their superiors. Make yourself look good by making others look bad—another chapter in the bestselling Washington management book.

  Kurt pulled the protective sleeve from the back of his desk drawer, smiled when he noticed the empty spot where he kept his letter opener, and wondered how long it would take authorities to match that thing in Hampshire’s neck with his fingerprints. He’d give them until Tuesday, if they were really good.

  He shut the drawer. Monday was going to be a golden day for him.

  Kurt heard a door open from the direction of Colonel Darnell’s office. That proved it for him. Darnell was the only one in this maze of cubicles who had a door to the glass-walled office located in the middle of the maze. If you wandered through the maze from one end to the other, eventually you’d stumble into the walled kingdom of Darnell, a dark place of evil for those pure of heart to avoid.

  Yeah, Monday, when those wearing the golden rings Darnell worshipped and desired read the Colonel’s emails, they would see the time on them and realize how late Darnell had worked on Friday. They’d respond with praise disguised as concern ov
er him working so late. Kurt had nearly gagged from the number of times general officers had mentioned their concern over Darnell’s late hours, never asking how many people were forced to ignore their own work to make him look good.

  No, for Kurt, give him an old-timer who had been around the block a few times with no illusions about making flag—about chasing those stars. They understood. They knew the game and they appreciated the government service personnel who slaved daily in the service of their country. But, those military “A-type” personalities and their “holier than thou” attitude pissed him off. The military people could leave anytime they wanted. They didn’t have to stay late. They didn’t need to come in early, but not Darnell. He did both and he expected those serving him—you were never working with Darnell, you worked for Darnell—to do the same, except Fridays. Friday was the man’s day for his career, not that the other days weren’t either. However, Friday was his chance to stand out. And it looked better if he was by himself when he worked, in the event one of those flag officers dropped by unexpectedly.

  Kurt saw the folder in his inbox. Any other day he would have signed it earlier and hand-carried it to the office manager—a fancy name given to secretaries today. Kurt pulled the folder stamped with the words “Time Card” on it, opened it, saw the familiar document, and without scrutinizing it closely as he normally would to make sure they weren’t screwing him out of his pay, he signed it and slid it into the outbox. He did this knowing that no one ever picked up things from your outbox. They’d throw things into your inbox, but the outbox was your responsibility.

  The time card folder in the outbox would lay undisturbed until the Criminal Investigation Division—the notorious CID—showed up to crawl over his stuff. Military personnel didn’t have to put in time documents. You might call them salaried employees. So whether they were doing one-upmanship on number of kills or jogging umpteen thousand miles, they never documented their hours.

  The Department of Defense even had career plans for military brethren and sisters, though civilians were like serfs of the Middle Ages. Didn’t need a career plan for serfs. They’re fodder to do menial labor while political appointees and military members dance to ever-changing agendas reverberating through the halls of the Pentagon. He taped closed the plastic sleeve over the CD and laid it on top of the first one. His last delivery and upstairs his departing gift to his fellow loyal citizens whose sense of patriotism kept them at their monotonous tasks day-in and day-out.

  Kurt should have been a Senior Executive Service. And he would have, too, under the Navy captain that preceded Darnell. But Darnell took an instant dislike to him. Kurt knew what it was. He’d seen it too many times in the eyes of others. He grabbed his love handles and jingled them. More like group-sex handles, he told himself. Darnell hated him because he was fat. But Kurt knew his professional capabilities. He hadn’t been placed in charge of the Air Force laser weapons program because he was incompetent.

  Like rough weather, captains came and went, but he and other government employees stoically remained to carry on the work of the Department. He could wait Darnell out, but his last government appraisal had damned his professionalism. Called him incompetent. Not in those words— supervisors never wrote anything concrete. What they did was praise your work and in the little-used section of the appraisal where the supervisor identified areas for improvement—that’s where you found the dirt.

  “Kurt! You coming?”

  You still here, Thomas? he asked of himself. Kurt ignored the question shouted from near the exit door of their work area. Friday afternoon drink-a-thons at the Pentagon City complex across the beltway weren’t his thing. He glanced over his shoulder at the beam that ran the length of the huge room at the Navy Annex. Black blocked letters identified the room as belonging to the Missile Research Defense Agency. You could still read the title, Ballistic Missile Defense Office, where the workers had partially removed the letters when BMDO moved to new quarters.

  His computer beeped, drawing his attention. The words “download complete” blinked on the screen. He ejected the third CD and quickly replaced it with a fourth.

  Kurt raised the CD to his lips and kissed it. He turned it side to side, smiling at the markings that showed this to be an unclassified CD. This was it. This was his passport to getting the hell out of here and enjoying the remaining years of his life. Let’s see, he said to himself, I’m fifty-four now; my father died when he was seventy-four. My grandmother at seventy-five. I still have another twenty years of life, if genetics are any indication.

  The CRT showed his download nearly complete. This fourth one would be quick. It only held the decoding sequences for the first two CDs. He waved the CD in his hand and glanced at the third CD. The third CD held supplemental database material, but this fourth CD held the programmatic key. You could play all day with this data, but without the programmatic key it wouldn’t make a lick of sense to the viewer. This fourth CD opened the first two CDs, and, once opened, the data on the third CD could easily be retrieved.

  Kurt pulled his handkerchief out and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He looked at the handkerchief. Nice, white, and clear. Put into his trousers this morning freshly folded from the dryer. He shuddered a couple of times, thinking of the dead man’s handkerchief. Couldn’t really call it a handkerchief—more a rag. Probably used it to check the oil in his car between blowing his nose in it or stuffing it in his ear to screw the wax out.

  He wiped his forehead again. He shouldn’t be sweating. If he was going to be nervous, shoving that letter opener through the man’s neck would have been cause for sweating. It did go in easily for such a blunt instrument. The air conditioning must be broken, he thought.

  He grinned for a moment, but only for a moment. Tonight was the night. He lifted the roll of fat—group-sex handles—hanging over his beltline, felt the sweaty ring around his waist. Cool air rolled across the wet line. A personal trainer! That’s what he would get when—

  By Monday, his co-workers would be shouting his name, but it would be shouts wondering where in the hell he had disappeared. No one suspects anyone of anything in Washington until it’s too late. Then, that old index finger swings a 360, pointing at anyone or anything to shift the focus away. Heat on you is heat off me.

  He knew how the serfs in the fields would react. He was one. One of those government employees who arrived on time every day—did their jobs—filled out their time cards so everyone looking over everyone else’s shoulder could make sure no one was cheating—and then around four-thirty dragged their sorry asses from the buildings to head home to the average American family of two and a half children. What ever happened to the other half a child? Some were like the asshole shouting his name, searching for something to do until the beltway cleared. Nope; the government servants were truly the hidden masses among the self-proclaimed heroes of the nation’s capital.

  “Hey!”

  Kurt jumped.

  “You hear me shouting your name, Kurt? You going to stay late again?” Tom Brass asked, leaning around the opening to Kurt Vernigan’s cubicle.

  Kurt dropped the CD. Like a dropped coin, the CD rolled across the tight carpet, curving in its trajectory to wobble a few inches before falling at the feet of Brass.

  Brass laughed, bent over, and scooped it up. “Boy, you’re sure jumpy lately.” He stepped fully into the cubicle and tossed Kurt the CD, laughing at Kurt’s clumsy attempt to catch it. The CD bounced off Kurt’s knuckles and landed on the desk behind him.

  “Thanks,” Kurt said with a tinge of anger. He picked up the CD and slipped it into a protective plastic sleeve. Then he laid it on top of the other three.

  Brass slapped him lightly a couple of times on the back and in a quiet voice asked, “Kurt, why do you do it? You’re here before the rest of us every morning and you’re still here when we leave at night. Don’t you ever go home?”

  “I know, but—”

  “Kurt, you’re a GS-15 government employee like the res
t of us.” Kurt waved his hands. “Scratch that. You’re not exactly like us. You’ve been with the Department of Defense . . . how long?”

  “About—”

  “Twenty-five years, if I recall correctly, and I think I do. You should be knocking on the door for Senior Executive Service status years ago. You know. I know. Everyone knows that if anyone deserves it, it’s you.”

  “That’s all well and good—”

  Brass slapped him on the back again. You’re one luckybastard, Thomas. If only I had an extra letter opener, Kurt thought.

  Kurt wondered if he could grab him and break that hand before Brass realized what—

  “But, it isn’t going to happen. Like I told you last week; the colonel has it in for you. For that matter, he has it in for all of us, but you, he takes great delight in torturing.”

  Kurt looked up at the face of his middle-aged cohort from the cubicle several doors down. The man’s lips were moving, but Kurt’s attention was on the large white-faced clock behind Brass. Ten minutes to five! Near the steel combination door leading into the Missile Research Defense Agency someone shouted another “bye.” The whine of the heavy door opening as unseen government employees and military officers hurried through them, heading home after a long week stuffed in the bowels of the Navy Annex in Arlington, drowned more of Brass’s words. Kurt reached up and absent-mindedly pushed long strands of disarrayed hair up and across the bald spot that had conquered a once-mighty bush that had forested the top.

  Brass laughed, reached forward, and playfully poked Kurt on the arm.

  Kurt wished he could break that arm. The finger would be fine. He grinned as he envisioned the expression on Brass’s face if he jumped up and, with one quick twist and flick, broke the man’s arm. Of course, until he lost weight, quick twists and flicks were purely imaginary. He smiled.

  “See, I knew you wanted to come. Besides, it’s time to get over this ‘all work, no play’ syndrome. What’re you going to do? Sit here until six or seven and then go home to that empty apartment of yours. Why don’t you come with me to Old Town Alexandria. Tonight’s Pet Night in one of the local pubs. You bring your pet, look like a concerned lover of animals, and meet enchanting one-night-standers who’ll share their body with anyone who ‘ohs and ahs’ their pets.”