Copyright © 2018 William R. Hunt & Stephen M. Truax
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.
Front cover image by fiverr.com/oliviaprodesign
www.WRHunt.com
To Stephen M. Truax, my fellow author and loyal friend: Were I asked to storm the breach, there’s no one I would rather have by my side.
Part 1: Operation Geneva
I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them. But the truth is, they’re measured by their consequences.
Blake Crouch
The Last Town
First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.
Emily St. John Mandel
Station Eleven
Chapter 1
BEFORE
He was Stateside at a bar when he saw the news. Bright text scrolled across the bottom of the screen:
“WARNING: SOME IMAGES MAY BE DISTURBING. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.”
The camera panned along a row of beds in a makeshift field hospital.
The reporter said, “This is all that remains of Prievska, a village in northern Kerovia that, until 4 AM this morning, was home to about twelve thousand ethnic Gypsies. Witnesses in neighboring areas claim to have woken to the sound of a low-flying jet, which may have been responsible for the devastating chemical attack.”
The screen jarred slightly as the cameraman followed the reporter to one of the beds, where a child no older than five was curled in a ball on the mattress. His body was layered with bandages that hardly managed to cover all the wounds. It looked as if a dog had taken bites out of the boy.
“As you can see,” the reporter continued, “this chemical agent reacts immediately upon contact, eating away the flesh almost like an accelerated form of gangrene. A team of Red Cross volunteers in this very hospital have estimated the mortality rate at eighty-five to ninety percent, though that figure could rise as—”
“I think it was the Russians,” a voice farther down the bar suggested. He was wearing a leather vest and a red headband that said “Merica” in white letters.
“What about ISIS?” a woman wearing a green knitted sweater asked. “They’re the real threat, not the Russians.”
“When’s the last time you heard about terrorists flying jets?”
“Flew ‘em into the World Trade Center, didn’t they?”
“Al-Qaeda,” Victor corrected.
The biker and the woman with the knitted sweater both turned their heads.
“It was Al-Qaeda who attacked the World Trade Center,” he added. “And they flew passenger airliners, not jets.” He returned his attention to the TV above the bar, where someone wearing a hazmat suit was walking along a dirt street. As the camera pivoted to the right, Victor glimpsed the body of a woman sprawled on the front steps of her home, the door ajar behind her. She was pregnant.
“Jets or no jets,” the biker resumed, “I’ll bet you dollars to donuts Putin is behind this. He’s ex-KGB, you know.” He nodded in a way that suggested this was all the proof they needed.
Victor’s pocket buzzed and he withdrew his cell phone, noticed a new message.
Where are you?
The sender’s contact ID read Camila.
On my way home, he texted back.
Camila: Have you seen the news?
Victor: Yeah. It’s just awful.
Camila: Did you see those kids? Who would do something like that?
Victor: There are some sick people in the world. He sent the message, then winced. Poor choice of words.
Camila: Just get yourself home, okay?
Victor: I will. Be back soon.
Camila: Love you.
Victor: You too.
He slipped his phone back into the pocket of his slacks and took another drink of beer. It was almost lukewarm now, but that was okay because he hadn’t come here to drink. There was a bar he could have stopped at on his way back from the downtown office building where he served part-time as a security consultant, but instead he had detoured through the city, telling himself he was trying a shortcut. Then he had noticed the neon sign of the bar while at a stoplight.
For most men, there was only one reason to stop at a bar where you could be sure nobody would recognize you. This was not Victor’s reason. He was dating a beautiful woman, and the fact that they didn’t have plans for marriage didn’t mean he was unhappy. Quite the opposite. He had stopped here because sometimes, when you had a lot on your mind, it was easier to sort through it in the company of strangers than of friends.
When he raised his eyes to the TV again, a panel of dubiously-qualified individuals were speculating on the possible consequences of the chemical attack.
An elderly man with glasses thick enough to be bulletproof shook his head sadly. “It’s inhuman. It’s barbaric. What kind of a world have we come to? This is why we set up the Geneva Convention—so atrocities like this wouldn’t happen. It’s just unconscionable to think anyone would do this.”
“But it did happen,” an agitated woman with a tight braid answered. “And what happens next? Make no mistake, this isn’t something that can be swept under the rug. This was an unprovoked attack on innocent civilians using weapons the civilized world has—”
“Dominoes,” the green-sweatered woman at the bar interjected. “That’s what happens next.” She was working diligently on a carton of peanuts, cracking the shells with her fingers and laying the meat in a neat pile.
Victor frowned at her. “Dominoes?”
“Mmhmm.” She went on cracking those peanuts. “Just like World Wars One and Two. Entangling alliances and all the rest. You’ve got North Korea and Iran developing nuclear weapons, all the turmoil in Syria and the Middle East, China laying claim to every island not guarded by a fleet of warships.”
“Don’t forget Russia,” the biker added. “They’ve been encroaching on Eastern Europe for years now. This could be their golden ticket—swoop in playing the savior card, set up their own satellites. Who’d stop ‘em?”
“Probably NATO,” Victor answered dryly.
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“Point is,” the green-sweatered woman continued, “the world’s a powder keg. We’re just waiting for someone to light the fuse.”
Victor finished his beer and folded a ten beneath the glass. “I think they already have,” he said as he opened the door and stepped out into the street. His ride, a red 1970 LS6 Chevelle with black racing stripes on the hood, waited front and center in the parking lot, its surface as clean as if it were on display at a dealership. The parking lot’s pair of sodium arc lamps, however, did no justice to the raw power of the machine. It was a panther, and this city was its jungle.
Approaching the car, he felt a sudden urge to climb into the Chevelle’s dark cockpit and shoot through nameless streets as the moon c
ame out, the windows down and his thoughts on nothing but the growl of the engine and the bright lights blurring past. A car like that practically begged you to do it.
He slid into the seat, listened to the smooth roar as the engine came to life, and placed his hands on the steering wheel. Between them he could see the picture of a young woman cradled beside the speedometer. Camila. She was on the balcony of a five-star restaurant they had booked downtown—their second date. Her arms were on the rail, her patterned dress stirring around her ankles, and she was leaning toward the city lights that surrounded her like constellations of fallen stars. You could just barely read the curve of a smile on her cheek.
Victor had felt a little presumptuous taking her picture on their second date, but now he was glad he had. He loved that picture. It was at that moment, watching her watch the city, that he had known he wanted to be with her.
He swung the car around and merged into traffic. Instead of turning off the highway and gunning the engine, letting the car pull him wherever it wished to go, he held his course and drifted back home, cruising no faster than ten miles above the speed limit.
___
The next day was a Saturday. Victor was laying steak tips and tinfoil-wrapped bundles of squash on the grill when his phone buzzed again. He closed the grill and looked for a way to clean his hands. He wasn’t wearing an apron.
“Wash!” he called, jerking his head in a Get over here gesture. Gary Washburn, a 40-something-year-old who still had the good looks of the stereotypical high school quarterback, politely excused himself from a conversation with two of Victor’s neighbors and approached the grill, beer in hand.
“Watch the steaks a minute, will you?” Victor asked. “I’ve gotta run inside.”
“You got it, boss.”
Victor followed the flagstone path to the kitchen, where he washed his hands in front of the window. He could see everyone from his vantage point—Wash standing vigil by the grill, the Cooper family who lived just up the road, a few work associates Victor had hoped would decline the invitation. If not for Camila, he would have spent the afternoon in the garage, putting up insulation and sheetrock delivered by Home Depot a few days ago. If he had finished early, he might have lifted weights or checked out that boxing gym he had noticed a few times on his drive to work.
Instead the afternoon had become a community event, a way for Victor and Camila, who had moved into the house together just a few weeks ago, to demonstrate they were not androids planted by aliens to study the human race. He was still waiting for someone to suggest the obligatory tour of the house, which inevitably involved inane talk about interior decorating and the merits of “warm” versus “cool” colors.
Living the dream.
He dried his hands and fished his phone from his pocket.
A pair of hands slipped around his stomach. “What are you doing, hiding in here?” Camila asked.
Victor twisted his neck just enough to see the dark braid of hair lying across her shoulder. She wore it that way when they went out to eat or entertained guests, but at the end of the day when it was just the two of them in the big, half-furnished house with the fifty-inch TV and the walk-in closets, she would take off her shoes and let her hair down, and that was when Victor felt most like this 400k house with its half acre and four bedrooms was actually a home. She had once asked why he liked her hair being down so much, and he had said the only thing that made sense: “It makes you look wild.”
He felt her fingers splayed against his stomach and thought, I just have to get to the end of this afternoon. Just keep smiling and offering beers.
“Came in to wash my hands,” he answered.
“And left Gary doing your job for you.”
“What else are friends for?”
She laughed, pecked him on the cheek, and pulled away. “Stan’s wife asked about seeing the house. I think I might show them around after we eat. Wanna join?”
“Sounds about as fun as a tooth extraction.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Just show them the guns in the safe. That will get rid of them in a hurry.”
Victor watched her return to the backyard. It was like the sun coming up, the way everyone seemed to brighten around her. A vibrant, compassionate energy radiated outward from her like a ball of electricity, so powerful that it would have overloaded her circuits if she kept it inside. That was why Victor had agreed to this community event—for her sake, not his.
She was a good woman, came from a family that believed in principles like hard work and self-sufficiency. He had only been with her four months, but they made a good team. She was gentle, generous, forgiving—all traits he sorely lacked.
Why not ask her to marry him?
It was one of those out-of-the-blue thoughts that sound outlandish at first, but more reasonable the longer you think about it. Why not ask her? They could live here in his new house. He had a steady job, a successful career. He suspected she would push for children before he was ready, but wasn’t that what made marriages succeed? Compromise?
He dropped the towel, stepped in front of the door, then remembered he’d left his phone at the edge of the sink.
Picked it up, read the text.
Wheels up at 2000.
Checked his watch: 1:18 PM. Plenty of time. Camila would be disappointed, of course, and she would have to entertain the guests while he prepped his go bag, but she had known the unpredictability of his life when she started dating him. Their arrangement was simple: She would not pester him about being home more often or try to derail his career. In return, when he was home he would be all there—not dreaming about the last country he had visited or the next time he would stare down the barrel of a gun, but there, fully engaged with her.
The arrangement had suited both of them so far. He hated the way that glow in her eyes seemed to dim whenever he had to go, but he needed this as much as she needed to entertain people at the house. If he tried confining his life to a nine-to-five at a cubicle, he believed he would become like a restless, caged animal, ready to strike out at anyone who came close to him. Maybe even Camila.
“Thought you’d ditched me,” Washburn said as Victor crossed the lawn toward him. Then his eyes read the change in Victor’s face and he frowned. “What’s going on?”
“Check your phone.”
Washburn pulled out his phone and released a long sigh. “Should’ve seen it coming. Think this has to do with what happened yesterday?”
Victor shrugged, though he had a pretty good guess. “Go on, make some friends. This might be the last opportunity in your sorry life.” He grinned, but as he watched Washburn rejoin one of the isolated pockets of conversation, he felt a nagging sensation that he might be the one who never got another opportunity.
After all, hadn’t he just been thinking how perfect it could all be? Most people never got that kind of chance once, never mind twice. If you didn’t cash in, eventually your luck would run out.
“Everything alright?” Camila asked, watching him with her head slightly cocked in that You’d better not lie to me expression.
“Of course,” he answered, smiling, trying not to check out just yet, holding on to this one last moment. He would tell her soon enough. He just hated what it did to her.
“Well, hurry up with those steak tips, alright?”
“Sure thing.” Victor opened the grill, flipped the steaks, peeked at the squash, and tried to forget that just ten minutes ago his greatest concern had been whether it was too early for a second beer.
Chapter 2
Victor stared out the window as the plane rumbled down the airstrip, the wheels leaving the ground with a sudden sense of buoyancy like he was floating up from the bottom of a pool. Something knotted inside him began to relax. He always felt better once he was in the air, his doubts scattered on the runway like lost luggage.
“Everything good with you and Cam?” Washburn asked. He was sitting across from Victor. As the plane climbed through the fallin
g night and the cabin settled, Washburn pulled down a coffee-colored table between them and set his laptop case on the edge.
“Good as can be expected,” Victor answered.
“What’s that mean? You have a fight, you gotta tell me about it. Especially after what I told you about me and Lynn.”
“The gym membership?”
Washburn had been married for five years, just long enough - in his own words - for the romance to cool and all the little nagging details to start cropping up: how he snored at night and she woke him up, how she filled the weekend with her own plans before Gary had a chance to suggest spending the time together, how he deflected when she asked him about work, how their well-intentioned efforts always seemed to fizzle down to a homemade dinner and a Redbox movie. She wanted kids, he wanted the fire of their romance back, and gradually they both settled into saying more behind the other’s back than to the other’s face.
The Shadow Walker Page 1