Black Sheep

by David Archer

  “Perfectly executed, as always,” Allison said. “You’ll be interested to know that his associates in the heroin trade are all accusing one another of the killing. The bit with his pecker was a nice touch; two of his partners were known to have done exactly that with American soldiers during the Vietnam War. There is so much infighting in the organization now that it will probably be defunct within a few months. Good job.”

  Jenny smiled at her. “I enjoyed it,” she said. “Of course, as we were preparing to leave Hanoi the next morning, I got the call telling us to join Camelot in Bangkok. You remember that when you told me the situation, I suggested I pose as the sister, and that seemed to work fairly well. As I anticipated, the prison officials notified the Nay Thas, and they attempted to abduct me as well. My team worked with Camelot and his to extract me, and we were able to ascertain that Sarah and the other girl were taken to Khram Yai, an island in Pattaya Bay. We all went together to Pattaya and I contacted Maggie Lightner, our station chief there, and arranged for her and another woman from her staff to accompany us on a rented yacht. While most of us stayed on the yacht or played in the water around it, Camelot and Marco swam to the island to reconnoiter. They were able to confirm the presence of the two girls, so we returned to Pattaya and planned a night attack. The whiz kid, Neil, came up with an electric boat that was almost silent and we used it to reach the island in the dark, and were able to retrieve the other girl, but Sarah had already been taken away. I interrogated a few of the men from the island and was told that she had been sold to a man named Pak, but did not seem to be breathing when she was taken, so we returned to Pattaya. Neil located Pak, so the next day, after making sure the girl we rescued was sent back to the states, we paid him a visit. I posed as a fight promoter to get access to him, then explained that we were really looking for the girl he had bought from the island. He informed us that she was deceased, and we were taken to the temple where locals’ funerals and cremations take place. A monk there confirmed his story verbally, and we were shown a place in a flower garden where the monk said her ashes had been scattered. He also said that in order to honor her, they had cut off locks of her hair and spread them with her ashes. Camelot confirmed that he recognized the hair, and that he accepted their story. We returned to our hotel and made arrangements to leave the country.”

  Allison smiled at her again. “Concise and to the point. Now, give me your opinions.”

  “There’s something not right about the whole mission,” Jenny said. “First off, it seems awfully funny that we send an agent into a prison to set up the rescue of another inmate there, and then both of them are kidnapped out of it by known slave traders. Strikes me as an awfully big coincidence, you know? Then there’s the fact that Sarah got sold to Pak, but the other girl didn’t. If he was into pretty Americans, I’d expect him to want them both. I can definitely tell you that he lit up when he saw me; the man had a bulge in his pants the whole time I was near him. He didn’t go to that island looking for sex toys, he was looking for Sarah.”

  Allison narrowed her eyes as she looked at the young woman in front of her. “And your conclusions?”

  “Someone involved with Pak found out that Sarah was an American agent. That tells me that somebody on our side sold her out. After watching Camelot, I can’t believe he would do it, so I suspect it was one of the two men with him. There are other possibilities, of course, including the possibility it was someone on my own team, but I don’t think so. Also, after watching Camelot in action, I’m fairly certain that he has also figured this out. If I’m right, then I’m probably his number one suspect. After all, I spent a lot of time inside that prison demanding answers. From his point of view, I had the best possible chance to sell or trade the information that Sarah was one of ours.”

  “That’s very astute,” Allison said. “You are correct in that Noah came to the same conclusions, and even mentioned your time in the prison as being a good opportunity, but he does not suspect you above anyone else. Have you shared these opinions with your team?”

  “No,” Jenny said. “As I said, there is at least a slim possibility that one of my guys decided to capitalize on the chance to make some big money. God only knows how much somebody like Pak would pay to get his hands on an American secret agent, but there is no doubt he’d know how to turn a profit from her.”

  “I agree,” Allison said. “Anything else?”

  “The girl isn’t dead. And Camelot knows that, too.”

  “Why do you say that?” Jefferson asked. “Both.”

  Jenny turned her face toward him. “If she was actually dead, Pak wouldn’t have bothered trying to convince us, he’d simply have dropped her body somewhere it would be found. That way, there wouldn’t be any doubt. The fact that we were taken to the funeral temple and shown ashes and hair means that he wants us to give up on her, but he still intends to make a profit. He couldn’t do that if she was dead.” She shrugged. “As for why I think Camelot knows it? That guy has a mind like a computer, he can see things nobody else would. There is no way he wouldn’t figure out exactly what I just said, and he probably even saw things I missed that confirm it for him.”

  Allison watched her face while she was speaking, and sat in silence for a moment after she finished.

  “Once again,” she said, “you are correct. Camelot is aware that Sarah is alive, but he could not see any reasonable path to being able to retrieve her at that time. His mind, more like a computer than you can imagine, led him to the conclusion that identifying her betrayer was of paramount importance to our organization, and probably the only chance he has to get whatever intelligence it will take to get her back alive. Like you, he considers our local people in Thailand as suspects, but I keep them on a much tighter leash than any other agency does, and it’s virtually impossible for one of them to have done this. CIA has gone over each of them with a fine-tooth comb for the last nineteen hours, and we’ve found nothing to indicate that any of them has made any improper contacts.”

  “So that means the traitor is either on his team or mine,” Jenny said. “If it turns out to be one of my guys, I want the pleasure of killing him.”

  “I suspect you’d have to beat Camelot to it.” She looked at Jefferson. “Donald?”

  “Jenny’s smart, but she’s not as smart as Noah. If she were the one who had betrayed Sarah, she wouldn’t have shared her suspicions with us so readily. Also, I observe that every time she mentions Pak, her eyes contract slightly and the corners of her mouth turn down for a split second. Together, those micro-expressions indicate that she is controlling feelings of anger, disgust. If she had secretly profited from whatever deal he made to get his hands on Sarah, that little sign of anger wouldn’t be there; I’d expect to see something more like satisfaction, or pleasure.”

  “I agree,” Allison said. “Jenny, I’m sending your team back out with Camelot on another mission, today. Have your team here at one o’clock for briefing. This is a very serious and important mission, so I expect it to be carried out successfully, but the real reason for teaming the two of you up is to identify the traitor. Camelot will have lead on this mission, and you’ll all be subject to his orders.”

  She leaned forward and clasped her hands together on her knees, looking Jenny straight in the eye. “You will not share your suspicions with any of your team. I’ll let Noah know that we consider you eliminated as a suspect, but be certain that you don’t even discuss it with him if there’s any possibility of being overheard.”

  Jenny smiled brightly. “Okay. See you at one o’clock.”

  She got up and walked out of the room, still smiling, but by the time she got to the elevators the smile had vanished. Unlike Noah, Jenny was a creature of emotions, and the strong suspicion that one of the men she had worked with during this last mission had betrayed one of their own had her blood boiling. Before she reached the parking garage in the basement, Jenny had already figured out how she wanted to kill the traitor if he could be identified.

>   She got into her classic '65 Mustang and took out her phone. It took her only a moment to text all three of the men on her team.

  Emergency mission. We are going out with Camelot again, woo hoo. Briefing room at one o’clock.

  Jim Marino was the first one to call her, as she pulled out of the underground garage. “Jenny? What gives?”

  “I told you, emergency mission,” she replied. “Something big, but I don’t know any details yet. Boss lady says she wants us and Noah on this one, so it must be pretty serious. Why? You got some kind of vacation plans?”

  “Nah,” he said, “but I was hoping for at least a little bit of a break. They don’t usually send us out again so soon after a mission. You're right, it must be something pretty hot.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. Gotta go, Randy’s beeping in.” She hit the flash button and smiled into the phone. “Randy, baby! Ready to get back in the saddle?”

  “I guess so,” Randy said. “Any idea where we’re headed?”

  “You know the old lady won’t give me any advance details. I’ll find out when you do, at the briefing. One o’clock, you got that?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” he said. “Okay, I’ll be there.”

  “See you then, stud.” She ended the call and waited, but it didn’t ring again. Instead, she got a text back from Dave saying he’d be at the briefing on time.

  Jenny drove straight to her house on McKinley Street and pulled the Mustang into her garage. She hit the button to close the garage door, then sat in the car until it was down and the inside lights came on. It was an old habit she had gotten into, never getting out of the car until the door was closed. It lowered the risk of being targeted if a sniper was watching for her return.

  When the lights came on, she got out and walked into the house through the steel door she had installed between it and the garage, then turned immediately to the right and went down the stairs into the basement. Jenny had a room set up down there as a home theater, with a projection TV set that put the picture on a ten-foot-wide screen. Sometimes she invited friends over for movie parties, and it was a lot like having her own theater all to herself. She even had a popcorn machine and soda fountain installed, so it would be even more like the real movie-house experience.

  She dropped into one of the couches that were set up as seating, picked up the remote and started scanning through movies. There was an incredible selection, all saved digitally on a massive Seagate hard drive. All she had to do was choose, and the movie would be on the screen before she could put down the remote.

  She chose one of her favorite horror films. When the rage started to build up inside her, watching extremely realistic scenes of cruelty and murder was the only thing that could damp it down and put her back in a good mood. That was usually enough for a short while, and then she’d get to go out on another mission.

  Sure was a good thing they didn’t deduct points for when she went overboard, but Allison had told her point blank that she could indulge herself all she wanted, as long as she only killed the target and any necessary collaterals. That was fine with Jenny; she only really got off when she knew her victim really deserved it, anyway.

  THREE

  Noah Wolf was a logical strategist. He examined every detail he could learn about a mission before it began and developed a mission plan that allowed him to take every possible advantage of advance knowledge. He made every effort to deduce and include factors that might go wrong, so that he could simply take them in stride and continue.

  Jenny Lance, on the other hand, preferred to go into a mission and evaluate it from the inside. Since the vast majority of her targets were totally and viciously male, her petite, athletic figure and angelic face were almost always enough to let her get close to them. Once she accomplished that, determining how, where and when to make the kill was easy for her.

  Jenny was classified as a high-functioning sociopath. She had always been manipulative, and with an IQ of nearly 140, she had always been the girl who could get whatever she wanted. Unfortunately, her relationships had suffered because she had a tendency to use people like pawns and then discard them when she was finished. She could be a charmer when she wanted, and could instantly adapt herself to any social situation. With those abilities, it was easy for her to get just about anyone to do whatever she wanted at the time.

  The only person she had ever felt truly close to had been her sister, Leanne. Jenny was the elder by four years, and while she had occasionally used Leanne as she did others, she spent more time protecting her baby sister from their abusive father and apathetic mother. When she graduated high school and left for college in Florida, she spent at least an hour every night on the phone with Leanne.

  Then, just after beginning her sophomore year at FSU, Jenny got the phone call that would change her life forever. Leanne had been found dead during a trip with her mother to New York City, the victim of rape and strangulation. The police suspected a sixteen-year-old boy of the crime, but more than a dozen of his friends smugly swore that he had been with them when it happened. They were all members of the same gang, and the suspect became a full member immediately after Leanne’s death. Investigators were convinced that the rape and murder had been part of his initiation, but without conclusive evidence there was nothing they could do.

  Jenny dropped out of college and went to New York. Her name at the time had been Genevieve Spears, and her search for a job led her to audition for a part in a soap opera, which she got. It was a small part, but her innate acting ability got her noticed by TV critics and magazines. Had she chosen, she probably could have worked her way into some form of stardom.

  It was all part of her camouflage, however. Jenny had decided that her sister’s death would be avenged, at first only planning to try to bring the killer to justice. When she found out that her sister’s life had been the price of admission to a gang, however, she decided that a more permanent solution was needed.

  Jenny had once seen a movie that left an impression on her. Val Kilmer played a prison inmate who was serving multiple life sentences because he murdered sixteen people. His reasoning was that one of them had murdered his wife and daughter in cold blood, and so he killed that individual along with his entire family, in order to remove their seed from the gene pool.

  For more than two months, Jenny carefully stalked then-seventeen-year-old Shaundel Sanders. Watching him carefully, never exposing herself, she saw his sadistic and cavalier attitude toward girls, which convinced her that the police had been correct. Once, she overheard him joking with his brothers about “that little white bitch I wasted.” It was at that moment that Jenny decided to emulate Kilmer’s character. She would eliminate things like Shaundel from the gene pool of the human race, by killing not only him but his entire family.

  Four more months passed as Jenny, in various disguises, carefully studied Shaundel’s family, which seemed to consist only of himself, his three brothers and their parents. She observed each of them, determined to figure out the best way to get close enough to kill them all. She had watched their movements throughout the day, knew their habits and even those of their neighbors. The little four-flat building they lived in had only two other tenants, a couple who owned a bakery and always left for work at three o’clock in the morning. The two flats on the ground floor were empty, and the windows and doors boarded over.

  She struck just after dawn. One of the brothers, Michael, had a habit of coming in as the sun came up, and Jenny was on the street where she knew he would see her. The sight of a pretty little white girl was all it took to catch Michael’s attention, and as she’d expected, he instantly began to flirt. Jenny batted her eyes and blushed, pretending to be flattered, and then accepted when he told her he was an artist and wanted to paint a picture of her.

  As he took her arm and walked her toward his apartment building, he told her about his brothers and how he was sure they would all love to meet her. Still smiling, she told him she thought that would be great, so when
they made it up the stairs to his apartment, he told her to have a seat on the sofa while he woke them up and got his easel and paints.

  It took almost 20 minutes for him to get all three of his brothers, including Shaundel, to roll out of bed and come meet “his new ho,” and Jenny sat patiently as she was introduced to first one, then another and finally the youngest. Their parents, Michael told her, were still sleeping but would be up soon. She could meet them then.

  Jenny had smiled sweetly at all three of the boys, then asked if they would mind if she smoked. When they laughed and told her to go ahead, she opened her big purse and reached inside. Instead of cigarettes, however, she pulled out a nine-millimeter pistol.

  Three months of almost daily practice at a gun club in Jersey paid off. Jenny didn’t need to aim; each bullet went where she pointed the gun, and she saved Shaundel for last. He had watched in shock as she fired three times in less than two seconds, blowing the brains out of all three of his brothers before turning the gun to him.

  “Remember the ‘little white bitch?’ The one you raped and murdered so you could join the Purple Bloods? That was my little sister.”

  Shaundel had fallen off of the sofa onto the floor and was crying as he tried to crawl backward away from her. “I din do shit to no white girl, bitch, why you doin’ this? Who da hell is you?”

  The terror in his face and voice sent a thrill down Jenny’s spine, and she suddenly broke into a huge smile. “Who is I?” she asked. “I am death, you asshole,” she said, the last words he ever heard. Her single bullet wiped him out of existence as it pushed his brain out the back of his skull, leaving his face with what almost looked like a third eye.