by Dirk Patton
“The CIA!”
“Maybe. Maybe not. So, I asked her if I could speak with the examiner that performed the autopsy. Had to wait for a bit, but got in to see him. He claims he doesn’t really remember it, even though it was only a few days ago. Said that means there wasn’t anything suspicious, because he’d remember that. He was lying.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I never asked if there was anything suspicious. I just asked if he remembered performing the autopsy. Nothing else. He offered up the rest before I could ask another question. And, he’s scared. He was nervous. I’m kind of surprised he even agreed to talk to me.”
“Son of a bitch! I knew it!” Anna fumed.
“Hold on, that’s not all,” Sean said, placing a restraining hand on her shoulder. “I was followed, too.”
The anger vanished from her face, replaced by fear.
“Followed? Are you sure?”
“Sure as I can be.” Sean nodded emphatically. “Saw the same car twice on the way there. A lane over and a hundred yards back. Didn’t think much of it until it was there again on my drive home. Stopped at a Home Depot and went in and wandered around for ten minutes, just to see. When I came back out and got on the road, there he was. Whoever it was is damn good. If I hadn’t been trained on counter-surveillance, I don’t think I would have spotted him.”
“You think they’re going to come after us?”
Anna was frightened, but also angry.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. At least not now. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re just keeping an eye on us. You were probably followed today, too. And, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out the house is bugged.”
“What do we do?”
“That depends,” Sean answered. “What do you want to do? Do you want your dad’s company, or do you want to let the suits run it until you can sell and cash out?”
“I have to think about it,” Anna said after a long pause. “What if we just walk away?”
“We can do whatever we want. I’ve got my retirement, and you’ve got a Brigadier General’s pension. We don’t have to worry about money. Say the word, and we can hit the road. Maybe get some property up in the woods somewhere and settle down. No more war zones or spooks or any of the other shit.”
Anna looked into his eyes for nearly a minute before shaking her head.
“No! That’s not us. We’d be bored out of our minds inside a week. Besides, if these fuckers killed my dad, I want justice. We’re going to do exactly what they want. Lull them into thinking we’re good little soldiers. Once they believe we’re towing the line, we can start digging. Very carefully. We’ll find something to nail them to the goddamn wall!”
Sean didn’t answer, and Anna took his hand in hers.
“What? You want to run?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not that. I just hope you understand what you’re getting into, climbing in bed with the CIA. These guys are good, especially in covering their tracks. We may never find the evidence you want, and by then it will be too late. We’ll be so far in they’ll never let us go. They will own us.”
Anna released his hand and began pacing around the barn. The air was getting thick with the exhaust from the tractor, but neither of them was willing to shut down the engine. If the CIA was trying to listen in, there was no way their voices could be heard over the roaring clatter.
“I’m staying!” Anna finally declared with finality. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this. If you want out, I’ll understand. This isn’t how a marriage is supposed to start.”
Tears sprang up in her eyes as she said the last. Sean smiled, shook his head and pulled her tight into his arms.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” he said, grunting when she squeezed him hard enough to cause his back to pop in several places. “Now, let’s get out of here before we asphyxiate ourselves. I need to make some phone calls.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled into his chest.
“By the way, are you OK with me hiring some new company employees? They don’t come cheap, but they’re worth every penny.”
Anna stepped back and gave him a curious look.
“Trust me,” he said.
After a moment, she nodded, then dried her eyes and reflexively tugged at her uniform to ensure it was hanging properly on her body. Sean shut the tractor down, the sudden absence of the harsh sound a physical relief. Hand in hand, they walked slowly back to the house, enjoying the fresh air after breathing exhaust fumes for so long. Rounding the corner into the courtyard, Sean paused and placed his hand on the butt of his pistol when they spotted a strange vehicle parked next to the rental car.
Looking around, no one was in sight, and he motioned for Anna to stay where she was. Drawing the weapon, he slowly advanced and checked each of the cars. They were empty. The sound of the front door opening snapped their heads around, and Sean aimed his pistol at the man who emerged through the front door.
“Dad?”
Sean forgot his training and took his attention off target to stare at his wife when she called out.
“Hi, Pumpkin.”
The man smiled and nodded.
“Dad!”
Sean lowered the weapon as Anna raced forward into her father’s arms.
“Well, come on inside,” he called to Sean. “Swept the place while you two were playing with the farm equipment. There’s no one listening.”
5
“What the hell is going on?” Anna demanded.
She was seated across the kitchen table from her father. Sean had decided to slightly remove himself from the situation and had gone outside to use his phone. As far as he was concerned, the sudden appearance of the man they’d thought was dead didn’t change anything.
“I faked it,” her father said, shrugging his shoulders and giving her a lopsided grin. “Sorry, Pumpkin.”
“Don’t call me that!” Anna snapped.
“I’m sorry, Pump… Anna.”
“You’d better start explaining,” she said, eyes flashing with anger.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got nowhere else to be,” Anna said sarcastically. “Speaking of which, where the hell have you been?”
“Hotel in New Orleans under a false name,” he said. “It really is a marvelous city. You and that young man out there should consider it for your honeymoon.”
“We were going to New York, but instead we’ve been here because we thought you were dead. Now, enough bullshit, Dad! What the hell is going on?”
He paused and looked around when the door opened and Sean walked in. Standing, he extended his hand and smiled.
“My daughter really does have impeccable manners,” he said, taking Sean’s hand. “But she’s a little distraught at the moment and neglected to introduce us. I’m Bill Thompson.”
“Sean Thompson,” Sean shook the proffered hand and moved away to lean against the kitchen counter.
“I must say, that has to be quite convenient,” Bill grinned, resuming his seat. “Marrying a woman with the same last name. Saves a lot of mess, as long as she doesn’t decide to hyphenate. Anna Thompson – Thompson. Does have a bit of a ring to it, don’t you think?”
Anna slapped the table top so hard it sounded like a gunshot.
“Enough! This isn’t charming, and it isn’t funny! Start talking right now or I’m walking out that door, and you’ll not see me again!”
Bill, still smiling, looked over at Sean as he pointed at his daughter.
“She said the same thing when she was fifteen and her mother and I wouldn’t let her go out with a boy we didn’t like.” He turned to face Anna. “What was his name, by the way? I always just thought of him as Mr. Foreskin.”
“Dad. I swear to you; I’ve been through enough in the past week. I know you like to use thirty words when two will do the job, but I’m out of patience. I’m not kidding! I’m ready to leave if you’re going to keep playing games.”
&
nbsp; “Settle down,” he said, making a calming gesture with his hands. “You’re just like your dear departed mother. Always right to business and no time to visit. OK, fine. I guess I can see why you’re a little upset.”
“A little?” Anna very nearly screamed.
Sean stepped forward and sat down next to her, taking her trembling hand.
“Bill, I think you’d better fill us in,” he said in a low, patient voice.
“Right. Sorry. I do get carried away with the sound of my own voice sometimes. So, where to start?”
“How about answering a question,” Sean spoke before Anna could explode again. “Are you hiding from the CIA?”
Bill looked at him for a beat before breaking into laughter.
“Oh, my goodness, is that what you two think? No, no, no. I work for the CIA. Have for years. Ever since I got out of the Army, for that matter. They’re the ones that financed the start of my company.”
“I don’t understand,” Sean said, risking a glance at Anna. For the moment, she seemed satisfied to let him ask the questions. “If you work for the CIA, why were you hiding? Why did you fake your death?”
“Because there’s some of us that are worried about what’s coming. We needed to do some things, and we needed the two of you here.”
“What things?” Anna asked when it was apparent Bill was waiting for a prompt before he would continue.
“Russia’s on the rise, again. So are the Chinese. And, there are elements within the CIA and DOD that are happy about that. They want nothing more than to see us return to the days of the Cold War. Unlimited funding, nearly unchecked power to run around the globe and do whatever they want. As long as it was couched in terms of being necessary to counter communist aggression, they pretty much got to do whatever they wanted.
“Get rid of a third world dictator and install a new leader that would let the Agency in? No problem. Withhold intelligence that could have stopped something horrible until it’s too late? They have no qualms about it. As long as their end game is successful, and it usually is.”
“What end game?” Sean asked.
“Why, money and power, of course! What else is there for men and women like this? They’ve determined the outcome of every US election for decades. Hell, Nixon was the last President that was actually elected by the people. Ever since, it’s been someone that was weak and could be controlled to further their agenda, or was actually one of them.
“But, they’re going too far. Getting in bed with the Russian mafia and the Chinese government. We don’t know what they’re planning, but it can’t be good. Not for the American people.”
“What are we talking about? A coup?” Anna asked, the earlier anger still simmering in her voice.
“No, no. Nothing so pedestrian. Besides, that’s already happened. Just no one knows it. Not unless the media tells them, and the media isn’t going to tell anyone anything that their masters don’t want to get out.”
“Then what?”
Bill took a deep breath and let out a low sigh.
“So, my company does a lot of clandestine work. We’re kind of like Air America was in Vietnam, only we don’t transport drugs. We take agents and spec ops forces in and out of places they aren’t supposed to be. Places that the US Government would categorically deny we’ve ever been in. But, that’s not all.
“Occasionally we are used to move cargo around inside the continental US. CONUS. Not long distances, mind you. Helicopters aren’t made for that. But if you’ve got something that needs to go a couple of hundred miles without the risk of it being interdicted by the police or anyone on the ground… well, that’s where we come in.
“So, about six months ago, we get this big job. Eight pieces of cargo, heavy cargo, that was to be picked up from this abandoned military bunker in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania and flown into New York City. Now, this was kind of unusual.”
“What was unusual?” Sean asked. “You said you move cargo around within our borders.”
“Right. But never into a metropolitan area. Almost always from one hick, backwoods area to another. You know. Locations that are hardly a dot on the map, if even that. The kind of places the Pentagon and Langley like to use because there aren’t any prying eyes in the neighborhood. A few times from a city out to the sticks, but never the other way around.
“So, this gets my antenna up and twitching, let me tell you. I’m already hearing rumors about some of the shit that’s going on with Russia and China, then this. What the hell needs to be in New York that is so sensitive it can’t go by truck? And, I start thinking about possibilities and don’t care too much for the answers I’m coming up with.”
“Which are?” Anna asked.
“Scary. Let’s leave it at that for the moment. Well, I didn’t like the idea of sending my boys out there to do something like this, so I decided to tag along. All our heavy lift birds were out of the country, but we had some Bell 407s that could do the job, so off we go with three of them.
“I gotta tell you, picking up that cargo in Pennsylvania was like something out of the movies. We landed and were immediately surrounded by heavily armed men. Pretty sure they were PMCs working for the Agency, but can’t prove that. They wouldn’t let us get out of the birds. Put blackout hoods over our heads so we couldn’t see what was going on. Brought their own team out that fueled us while the cargo was loaded by more of them. We were just bus drivers.
“Well, they get us all loaded, and we’re about to take off when three clean-cut young gentlemen come running up and get on board each chopper. Didn’t need to see ID to know they were fresh off the Farm at Langley and were there to make sure we didn’t mess with the cargo.
“So, we take off, and it’s a little over an hour-and-a-half into New York. It was already arranged that we would land at three different heliports. The bird I was in went to downtown Manhattan. Landed at 0330. Raining like hell, but there’s a dozen more of these armed PMCs waiting to greet us.
“They hooded us, got us unloaded, then all of them disappear into the night without so much as a wave. But, like I said, something about this whole job had bothered me from the very beginning, so I’d done a little prep work. Once we’d gotten back out of the city and joined up with the rest of our flight, I checked the instrument I’d hidden in the back. You know what a gamma sniffer is?”
Sean went still as a stone when the question was asked, as had Bill. Anna looked between them, concern on her face.
“What’s a gamma sniffer?” She asked when neither man said anything.
“Detects gamma rays,” Sean said without taking his eyes off Bill. “One of the signatures of a nuclear warhead.”
Bill nodded slowly as Anna’s mouth fell open in shock.
“You transported nuclear warheads into New York City?” She blurted.
“Possibly. Probably,” Bill said, looking at her. “There are other things that emit gamma radiation, none of them good, but if I had to bet I’d say that cargo was eight nukes. Old, cold war era ones, too, because they were heavy as hell.”
“Are you crazy?” She shouted. “What have you done? Did you call the FBI or Homeland Security?”
He just looked at her and shook his head.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” She was on her feet, leaning across the table. “You have to tell someone!”
“I tried,” Bill said. “Now, sit down and quit all that shouting and I’ll tell you the rest.”
6
“Who did you go to?” Sean asked when Anna had calmed down and taken her seat.
“First thing is, I called the FBI. Didn’t tell them anything on the phone, just said I was coming in with some potentially vital information. Had an appointment set with a specific agent. That was here in Alabama. Birmingham. Anyways, I showed up right on time and was taken into a conference room.
“Couple of guys in suits were waiting for me, but not the agent I had talked to on the phone. Seems he’d been suddenly reassigned right after my c
all. They weren’t interested in asking why I was there, just informed me that my company and I were about to come under investigation for trading with foreign powers. That there was a very good chance I’d wind up in federal prison.”
“What did you do?” Anna asked.
“Got the hell out of there as soon as they finished threatening me. Went back to my hotel and booked the next flight to Washington D.C. Was going to walk right into the Hoover building and tell my story. When I got to the airport and went to check in, the airline had no record of my reservation. Before I could do anything, the same two guys from the FBI office walked up, slapped cuffs on me and hustled me out of there. Thought for sure they were gonna kill me.
“They took me back to my hotel room. Guy from the CIA I’d run across a couple times in the past was sitting there, waiting for me. Some smug asshole that likes Hawaiian shirts and straw hats. Calls himself Delker. Pretty sure he used to be an operator. Sure has the look. Anyway, the FBI thugs uncuff me and leave me there alone with him. Didn’t know whether to kick his ass or run, but he shut me down with one sentence.”
“What was that?” Sean asked.
“First words out of his mouth. And that’s all it took,” Bill lowered his eyes and stared at the table. “Stop what you’re doing, or I’ll kill your daughter.”
The kitchen was silent for several long seconds, Bill finally looking back up at Anna.
“I wasn’t going to risk that,” he said. “Not for nothing. They can have New York, as long as they don’t hurt my baby girl.”
“Dad,” Anna said but didn’t continue.
“Don’t ‘Dad’ me, young lady,” he said. “You may be a grown woman, but you’re still my pumpkin. Always will be. No way am I going to let them hurt you.”
“What else did he say?” Sean asked, getting the conversation back on topic.
“Said that if he and I ever met again, he’d be delivering sad news about my little girl. Reminded me that Iraq is a very dangerous place, even in supposed secure areas, and that being an officer in the Army is an inherently dangerous occupation. That’s how the smug cocksucker put it. Inherently dangerous occupation. Well, I got the message loud and clear.”