Operation Assassination

by Anne Fox

  “There is it,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Has to be on her mouth.”

  “On her mouth?” Spud asked.

  James wasn’t listening. “Swab,” he said.

  Doc Rich handed him a cotton swab, and he gently reached out with it and swabbed Hank’s lips, managing to get a good bit of her lipstick on the swab even though she jerked her head away from it.

  “This should do it,” he said. “I’ll have to extract the lipstick, but both the DMSO and the 3-methoxy-PCP will dissolve in water, so give me a bit and I can tell you definitively whether or not that’s how she came in contact with it. I can re-extract it once I get the aqueous extract by solid-phase extraction. Then I can put it through the GS/MS and find out what it is. I can’t put lipstick through the GC/MS, though.

  “I’m pretty sure that it’s in her lipstick, so if I were you, Doc Rich, I’d glove up and get the lipstick off her. Don’t spread it around, either, or she’ll get a bigger dose. Keep whatever you take it off with just in case I’m wrong.”

  James disappeared back into the lab as Doc Rich donned gloves and proceeded to carefully blot the lipstick from Hank’s lips.

  “Ohhhh... what’s happening?” Hank said, her eyes rolling back into her head.

  Spud looked anxiously to Doc Andy.

  “She’s likely slipping into a K-hole state, Spud. She may drift in and out of consciousness, describe seeing or hearing things that aren’t real, and may experience a sense of drifting away from her body, among other effects.”

  “And there’s no way to stop this?”

  “No,” Doc Andy replied. “The effects of combining this drug with other drugs is simply not well-enough known to risk it. We just have to wait for the drug to clear her system.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “That very much depends on how much is in her system already,” Doc Andy said. “It could be hours, or it could be a couple of days.”

  “A couple of days?! And we just wait and watch her go through this?”

  “I’m sorry, Spud,” Doc Andy said. “There’s simply nothing else we can do without potentially risking far worse effects.”

  Spud sat in a chair next to her bed and watched as Hank slipped out of consciousness. Taking out his wallet, he removed the poem Hank had left on the couch earlier when the mission was still to assassinate the President. Unfolding the fragile paper, he read the poem through, then refolded the paper and put it back into his wallet. “Everything we’ve ever dreamt about, gone,” he murmured.

  The sound of Hank stirring woke Spud from a tortured sleep. He was still sitting in the chair next to her bed, someone having draped a blanket over him at some point.

  “What the hell,” Hank murmured.

  “Hank? Are you with me?” Spud asked anxiously.

  “How did I get here? What the hell happened?” She looked over at him. “What the fuck? How’d you get the black eye?”

  “Umm... You back-handed me with your fist.”

  “I did what? I don’t remember doing that,” Hank said, her voice sounding groggy. “I remember feeling dizzy, and the room seeming to slant off to one side. Something scared me, and I looked for you and couldn’t find you.”

  “I was right there, Hank. You called me by codename. I thought you were asking for extraction.”

  Doc Rich walked into the infirmary, and noting that Hank was conscious came over to assess her. “Medical 3, Hank is awake,” she called via the comm link. “How are you feeling, Hank?”

  “Like I’m not quite here.”

  “It’s the residual effects of the drug,” Doc Andy said, coming over.

  Hank tried to get up. “I’ve got to piss,” she said.

  “Actually, you don’t,” Spud said, feeling like he was watching a different version of her post-op period from her bum ticker surgery. “You’re catheterized, Hank.”

  She lifted the blanket over her and looked down. “I’m buck-naked in this bed. Who the hell... Ohhhh...” she moaned, putting her hands over her face. “There were monsters. They were trying to rape me. They yanked off my dress...”

  Spud felt tears form in his eyes. “Hank, I took off your dress.”

  “No. Monsters. They wanted to rape me. They experimented on me.”

  Spud looked over to Doc Andy.

  “Hank, you were exposed to a powerful hallucinogenic drug. A dissociative. You were hallucinating,” Doc Andy explained.

  “Oh, shit. It was horrible. Horrible.” She began to cry. “Is this what my brother wanted? Who could want this? It might be escaping from life, but it’s escaping straight into hell. I couldn’t tell which way was up. The room kept tilting. Pieces kept falling out. People smeared as they moved. There were beings there. Hideous monsters, all around me. I couldn’t get out. I had no control...”

  “You have to keep telling yourself, Hank, that it was just the drug you were exposed to,” Doc Andy said. “None of it was real.”

  “And we have to figure out how you got exposed to this drug, Hank,” Doc Rich said. “Can you tell us what happened? What were you doing before you felt dizzy?”

  “I was dancing with Spud. We were watching the President. He came over and asked to dance with me.”

  Spud was nodding, her recollections matching his.

  “He had his hand on my back. He told me I was beautiful. He moved his hand lower, onto my hip. It made me feel uncomfortable. I told him Spud would get jealous.”

  Spud was now listening closely to her.

  She looked over at Spud. “He said he’d have to make sure you couldn’t see. He turned me around.” Her forehead furrowed. “He groped me.”

  “He did what?” Spud asked.

  “He groped me. He put his hand on my ass and groped me. He was acting strange. He leaned toward me, and I thought he was going to dance cheek-to-cheek...” She put her fingers to her lips. “He kissed me. He tasted like garlic. It was weird. He tasted like garlic, and after he kissed me, all I could taste was garlic.”

  “That’s it,” Doc Rich said. “That’s how you were exposed. We found the drug and a carrier chemical in your lipstick. The carrier smells and tastes like garlic.”

  “So now the question is, who kissed the President before he kissed Hank?” Spud said.

  “Are you going to be glad to get out of here?” Spud asked Hank after helping her get dressed.

  “I... I guess so.”

  Spud was surprised by her answer. In the past, Hank could never wait to get out of the infirmary.

  He walked with her back to his quarters. She went inside and went straight to the couch.

  “Coffee?”

  “I don’t think so, Spud.”

  “Do I have to do a ‘Doc Andy’ and put a glass of water on the coffee table?”

  She looked at him, a hollow expression on her face. “We joke about Doc Andy’s little habits, but this thing has given me a greater appreciation of him than I had already.”

  Spud’s watch tapped him. “It’s Mike,” he said. “Ok to let him in?”

  “Sure.”

  Mike walked through the door, a garment bag over his arm. “I got the gown cleaned for you, Hank.”

  “What?”

  “The gown. It’s clean. Want me to hang it in the closet?”

  Hank’s face was pale. “No. I don’t want it here.”

  “You don’t want it?”

  “I can’t ever wear that dress again, Mike.”

  Mike looked at her, his face a mixture of puzzled and hurt. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Burn it.”

  “Let me take it, Mike,” Spud said. He took it and hung it in the back of the closet.

  Mike gave Spud a concerned look, then looked over at Hank. She was staring across the room at the opposite wall.

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” he said as he left.

  Sitting down next to her, Spud said, “It was the drug, Hank. You remember how you told me you were trying
to get into the drug cartel taskforce? Now you know why the taskforce is needed.”

  “I keep thinking about my brother. He went down that rabbit hole and never found his way back out. Is that what’s going to happen to me? Doc Andy says there’s not much known about how this drug behaves.”

  “Your brother didn’t just get exposed to one drug one time, Hank. You can’t compare yourself to him.”

  “What if it doesn’t go away?” she asked, fear in her voice. “What if there are flashbacks?”

  He put his arm around her and held her. I don’t know how to answer this. No one knows how to answer this. “I think maybe you’re just still too close to the event.”

  “I’m afraid. I’m afraid to drink coffee. What if the caffeine makes the hallucinations come back? What if I go to sleep and see those demons again? What if something scares me and I hit you again? What if the world tilts and I can’t walk again?”

  “What if it all just fades away? Did you stop to think it could all just fade away, Hank?”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “What if. What if. I tell you what. What if you go into the bedroom and take a nap, because I’m betting that between all these ‘what ifs’ and the effect of the drug that you could use some rest in your own bed. In our bed. I’ll even go get your blankie for you.”

  Spud got up and went next door to Hank’s quarters, retrieving her down comforter.

  “Come on. Climb into bed, Hank.” He tucked her in under her comforter, kissed her, and said, “There’s always one thing you can count on. I love you. I’m Secret Service, and you’re my protectee. I’ll always be here within arm’s length, and I’ll never let anything harm you.”

  “I wish I could count on that,” she said. “I wish I didn’t have to think about this drug coming back to haunt me. If it does, I might not know who you are.”

  Spud walked into the cafeteria and grabbed a cup of coffee, sitting down with it at the team table. Amigo was already there, reading something on his tablet.

  “Hey Spud.”

  “Hey Amigo.”

  “How’s Hank?”

  Spud cradled his coffee cup in his hands. “I don’t know. She’s pretty rattled by this whole experience. She’s afraid the drug is going to permanently affect her.”

  “Will it?”

  “No one knows. Doc Andy says it can, but usually at high doses. Trouble there is, we have no idea what kind of dose she got.”

  “Hey Spud.”

  This time it was Edge coming in to grab coffee. Sitting down at the team table, he asked, “How’s Hank?”

  “Team,” Spud said, sending the message across the comm link, “seeing as everyone has the same question, why don’t you all come to the cafeteria and grab some coffee?”

  When the rest of the team members had arrived, Spud turned his watch toward them. On its face was the facility map, with the locations of the team members shown on it, FT1 through 6 in the cafeteria, FT7 in Spud’s quarters.

  “You’ve all got this one up on the watch, am I right?” he asked.

  A general murmur of, “well, yeah” went around the table.

  Spud sighed. “Ok. At least you’re honest. In answer to the question ‘How’s Hank?’ the answer is, I don’t know. She’s upset. She thinks the effect of the drug could be permanent, and even Doc Andy has no idea if it is or isn’t.”

  “Is she sleeping?” Amigo asked.

  “I hope so. She was sleeping when I left the quarters. But she tells me she’s afraid to sleep. For Chrissake, she tells me she’s afraid to drink coffee.”

  No one wanted to joke about how uncharacteristic that was of Hank.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Spud continued. “I don’t know if I should touch her. Did you know that she thought I was a monster trying to rape her when we went to get her undressed in the infirmary?”

  “Shit,” Amigo muttered.

  “It was the drug, Spud,” Edge said.

  “I’m telling you: after what I’m seeing with Hank, none of the President’s behavior surprises me anymore. This is one freaky drug. Even the experts have little idea what effects it has on people. The only information out there is from the relatively few people who’ve reported using it, and their experiences are so varied that there’s no way to predict what effect it will have on Hank.”

  The remainder of the team sat silent, the concern evident on every face.

  “I’ll apologize, if you wish me to, for listening in,” Doc Andy said as he walked into the cafeteria.

  Everyone turned to face him.

  “I see that the situation with Hank’s exposure to this drug has you all concerned.”

  “Can you tell us if she’s going to recover?” Cloud asked.

  “Spud is correct when he told you the effects of this drug on humans are not completely known. The effects are similar to PCP. We have no idea what dose Hank received. But my inclination is to believe that a single exposure won’t create lasting effects. I can’t guarantee this, but it’s my gut feeling, if you want to think of it that way, that Hank will bounce back from this. She’s never been the one to simply let something subdue her – she’s too much of a fighter.

  “However, Hank isn’t the only member of the team, and I will tell you right now that I’ve been very concerned about all of you while watching this discussion. And for that reason, I am ordering the team to stand down until further notice.”

  No one objected.

  “You’re up.”

  Spud had been sitting at the table in the dining area of his quarters when Hank came out of the bedroom.

  “I’m starving,” she said, heading to the kitchen. “I hope there’s some food in here.”

  “I figured you might want to stay away from the rest of the team for a while, so I stocked the fridge and the cabinets,” Spud replied.

  She raided the refrigerator and returned with cubes of cheddar cheese, some dilled pickles, and some strawberries. Looking at her plate, Spud remarked, “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”

  “If I am, Doc Rich has a lot of explaining to do,” she said.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “I was able to get in a little nap.”

  She sat down next to him.

  “You’re going to sit and eat pickles and strawberries next to me?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “You see, you haven’t thought this through,” Hank said. “You’re thinking, ‘Pickles and strawberries. What kind of combination is that?’ What you don’t know is that I intend to eat the pickles, then eat the cheese. Pickles and cheese. Then I eat the rest of the cheese and the strawberries. Cheese and fruit.”

  “Ok. I was thinking...” Spud thought better of what he was about to say.

  “That the drug made me really weird?” Hank asked.

  Spud sat, silent.

  Hank stroked down his chest with a finger. “Spud, I want to know that I can feel normal again.”

  “You don’t feel normal now?” Spud asked, concern coloring his voice.

  “I want to know that seeing you as a monster won’t come back.” She took her hand and rubbed his thigh.

  “Hank, I...”

  “Make love to me, Spud.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Make love to me. I want to feel how you excite me. I want to feel how you complete me, and how relaxed I am when we’re done. I want to cuddle and go to sleep and have a wonderful dream the way I always do with you. I want to forget the nightmare I just went through.”

  “I tell you what: put on the dress, Hank.”

  She smiled. “Are you going to put on the tux? I never did get to take it off.”

  “Sure. I know how you like to unwrap your presents.”

  They went over to the closet. Hank reached in for the lipstick red dress.

  “Not that one,” Spud said. “This one.” He pulled out the plum evening gown.

  “You want me to wear that dress?” Hank asked.

  “You see, I saw the e
vening going like this,” Spud began. “We’d go to the White House and we’d work the mission. Then we’d come back and record the after-action report. Then we’d come here and I’d let you take off my bowtie, and you’d let me take the hairpin out of your hair. And I’d let you take off my jacket, and you’d let me take off your earrings. Starting to get the picture? None of that happened. I feel a little cheated.”

  She slid the dress off its hanger and laid it across the bed. Then she dropped what she was wearing on the floor. Her hands shaking, she reached out for the dress, hesitating momentarily. Then she picked it up and slipped into the dress, letting it fall over her body.

  Spud finished tucking his shirt into his pants. “The jewelry is in the top of the jewelry box,” he said.

  She took it out and put it on. “Can you help me with this?” she asked, holding out the bracelet. He put on his jacket and came over, fastening the bracelet around her wrist.

  “Is my tie straight?”

  She went to him and gave his bowtie a tweak.

  “Don’t forget these,” he said, holding out the satin panties.

  She slipped them on, then put on her shoes. “Have you ever noticed that men’s formal wear involves a lot more items than women’s does?”

  “That’s because our bespoke tailor is a man, and designs ladies’ dresses so that the lady is easily accessible,” he said, buttoning his jacket. He stood looking at her. “Hal, play Jim Croce, Time In a Bottle.” As the music began playing, he held out his hand. “May I have the honor of this dance?” he asked.

  She took his hand, and he held her close, swaying to the music, his hand on the small of her back, smiling and gazing at her.

  “Why don’t you move your hand a little lower?” she asked.

  He smiled and moved his hand to her hip.

  She smiled back at him and said, “A little lower.”

  He smiled and moved his hand to cradle her behind.

  “You are a wonderful dancer, Mr. President,” she said.

  He grinned and groped her.

  “Is it Christmas Day yet?” she asked.

  “It better be,” he replied. “Mike didn’t tailor enough give in the pants for much more of this.”