Operation Assassination

by Anne Fox

  “Wake up, Hank,” Spud said quietly.

  She lay next to him in the bed, stirring slightly against him as she nestled against his chest.

  “I don’t want to,” she said drowsily.

  He kissed her gently. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  “Don’t want to. Wonderful dream,” she mumbled.

  “Wake up and tell me your dream,” he said, brushing her hair back from her eyes.

  She lay with her eyes still closed and said, “I dreamt we had a big house in northern New Mexico. A big house, and a little boy.”

  “Where’d the little boy come from?”

  “I got pregnant. You delivered him.”

  Spud was taken a bit aback. “You know, I know how to deliver a baby, but I’ve never done it.”

  She opened her eyes. “You know how to deliver a baby?”

  “I was trained as an EMT in the Secret Service,” he said. “Doc Rich and Doc Wright keep me current. Ever since we dropped the policy of leaving injured team members down until the mission is completed, both they and I have seen it as an essential capability for at least one team member to have.”

  She sat up on the edge of the bed. “I should get them to renew the first aid training I got in the academy as well.” She got up and made her way into the bathroom.

  Hearing water running in the shower, Spud decided it was time to get up himself. Going into the bathroom, he started to brush his teeth. Taking a glance in the mirror, he noticed Hank soaping herself in the shower through the frosted glass of the enclosure.

  “Mmm.” He went back to brushing his teeth. Glancing in the mirror again, he gazed at Hank’s naked form and asked himself, Am I feeling normal again?

  He decided, both consciously and unconsciously, that he was. Dropping his toothbrush in the sink and his boxers on the floor, he stepped into the shower with her.

  “What are you doing, Spud?” Hank asked.

  “It looked like you were having a little difficulty washing your back,” he said.

  She turned toward him and said, “Somehow I don’t think you’re in here to wash my back.”

  “I’ll wash your back,” he said, “when we’re done.”

  Spud and Hank walked into the cafeteria where the rest of the team was eating lunch.

  “Well, look who decided to stop being antisocial,” Amigo remarked.

  Spud and Hank grabbed food and sat down at the team table. The other team members made note of the cup of coffee Hank had set down next to her plate.

  “Feeling better, Hank?” Amigo asked.

  She just smiled at him over the rim of her coffee cup as she took a drink from it.

  “Oh, I know that little smile,” Edge said. He got up, and the other team members got up along with him. Coming around behind them, Edge pointed at their heads. “Take a look here, guys. Both of them have wet hair.”

  The guys stood grinning as they watched the back of both Spud and Hank’s necks start turning red.

  Edge pointed at Spud. “Grab him, guys.”

  Voice, Amigo, Crow and Cloud grabbed Spud and dragged him out of his chair, knocking the chair over onto the floor. Struggling, he said, “Someone’s going to get hurt here.”

  “Oh yeah?” Edge said. He grabbed the waistband of Spud’s sweatpants and looked down. “Just what I thought, guys,” he said, letting go of the waistband. “He’s naked under his sweats.” He grinned at Spud. “Put him back in the chair,” Edge said, setting it upright. “It’s time to interrogate this perp.”

  “I’m not saying a word to you, copper,” Spud said.

  “Oh? Do we have to check out what’s under Hank’s sweats as well?” Edge asked.

  Hank turned crimson.

  “You’d better not!” Spud said.

  “Whatcha gonna do about it?” Edge asked. “Seems to me that these other fine gentlemen have you pretty well detained. Now answer my question, perp. Did you do her in the shower?”

  “I washed her back,” Spud protested.

  Hank had planted her face in a hand. Oh... my... God, she thought.

  “I don’t think we’ve heard the whole truth,” Edge said, grinning. “So I’m going to ask you again. Did you do her in the shower, Spud?”

  Hank had now buried her head on the table in her arms. Not being able to help herself she started to laugh, getting the entire team grinning.

  “I think your darling wife just answered for you,” Edge said. “You’re supposed to get clean in the shower, Spud. Not dirty.”

  “You’re all just jealous because your women all come with four fingers and a thumb attached,” Spud protested, waving a hand at them. “Except for Voice. His woman comes with her leaks patched.”

  Hank laughed out loud.

  “Oh, fuck you two,” Voice said, his face red.

  Hank got up and put her dirty dishes in the dish bin. “Don’t mind if we do. Let him go, guys, or I’ll hurt you.”

  Releasing him, the other five team members stood back.

  “You heard the lady,” Spud said. He dropped his own dirty dishes into the bin and followed her.

  Getting to his quarters, Spud told Hank, “I think I’d rather get into my tux.”

  “Why?” Hank asked.

  “Because I’ve got a few dance moves you haven’t seen yet,” he said.

  “Oh, really? So plum dress, not red dress. It’s a little tough to do any kind of dancing in the red dress.”

  “There’s always the blue dress Mike made specifically for dancing,” Spud said. “I think you’ll find these moves a little difficult even for the plum dress.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not thinking ballroom dancing this time, Hank.”

  “Oh. Ok.” She headed off to her quarters to get it on.

  Meeting back up in the corridor, Spud commanded Hal, “Play Spud’s dance mix, facility PA.” Hearing the variety of music, Hank exclaimed, “So, you think you’ve got some moves!”

  Spud grinned and replied, “Let me show you the moves I’ve got.”

  Hearing the music, the other team members came around into the Field Team residential area to see what was up.

  “Ah! Ella sabe algunos movimentos caliente!” Amigo said, and went over behind Hank, beginning to dance along with them by rubbing his butt against Hank’s. She laughed and turned to dance with him.

  “No daggering my wife,” Spud warned.

  Other unit personnel were also beginning to arrive in the corridor, joining in with the Field Team members, and soon everyone was dancing and laughing.

  Doc Rich and Doc Andy arrived and stood watching.

  “The conversation I listened to on the security feed from the cafeteria prior to this was quite interesting,” Doc Rich said.

  “Oh? You listened in as well?” Doc Andy asked.

  “Apparently, our married couple use the shower for more interesting things than showering,” Doc Rich confirmed.

  “Indeed. I do believe the Field Team is ready to resume their mission,” Doc Andy remarked to Doc Rich.

  “I do believe your diagnosis is correct, Doctor,” Doc Rich replied. “Care to dance?”

  18

  “We know from Hank’s exposure that she must have come in contact with the drug when the President kissed her,” Spud said. “So as we’ve already concluded, we need to find out who kissed the President before he kissed Hank.”

  The Secret Service gunny pondered this information. “The easiest way to find out will be by talking to the agent on the shift that night who was accompanying the President. Let me find out who that was and ask him, and then get back to you.”

  “Let’s hope that solves this case,” Spud said.

  Once the gunny had been escorted from the unit’s facility, the team members got back together to plan for contingencies in the event that all questions might not be answered by the gunny’s questioning of the agent who had been with the President the night of the reception.

  “We certainly know who we can eliminate,” Amigo
said. “It’s a given that it’s a woman behind what’s going on with the President.”

  “True, but who?” Spud asked.

  “Maybe the First Lady,” Hank said. “The guy groped and kissed me. Maybe the President isn’t exactly faithful and the First Lady isn’t exactly passive about it. The First Lady was certainly there that night. When the President came into the East Room looking to dance with some of his ‘fairer citizens’ I believe he put it, he said the First Lady was mingling with guests elsewhere.”

  “Was she acting normally?” Edge asked.

  “As far as I know,” Hank replied.

  “So, if she had the drug in her lipstick, why wasn’t she affected?” Edge asked.

  Everyone turned and looked at Edge.

  “That’s a very good question,” Spud said. “If this stuff is being exposed to the President through skin contact, and I’d assume if he was kissed to get it on his skin it would be from someone who had it on their lips.”

  “Unless he kissed a woman’s gloved hand,” Hank said. “Quite a few women will wear gloves with formal wear.”

  “We need to get a message to our Secret Service gunny, Voice,” Spud said. “Tell him we need to not only know who kissed the President, but also who he kissed, even if that kiss was on a gloved hand.”

  “Here it is,” Voice said, taking up his ever-present pencil. He began to jot down notes in the margin of the newspaper’s Classifieds. “Message reads, ‘Agent reports no other women kissed nor kissed by President. One other woman kissed by President on hand, not gloved.”

  “Really?” No glove on her hand?” Cloud asked.

  “That’s what the gunny says.”

  “Who was it?” Hank asked.

  “The Vice President’s wife. The Second Lady.”

  “I saw her mingling with the guests. She was acting perfectly normal,” Spud said.

  “None of this makes any sense at all,” Hank said. “Whoever transferred the drug to the President transferred it to his lips. I smelled the garlic smell on him, and tasted it when he kissed me. Unless he chewed on a clove of garlic before he kissed me, that had to be how I got the drug on my lips. But if the only other person he kissed was the Second Lady, and on her bare hand, then she should have been acting strangely as well. And I’m certain she wasn’t.”

  Amigo headed to the armory. Arriving he found Luigi rubbing some kind of lotion on his hands.

  “I’d like my Glock, Luigi,” he said.

  “Give me just a minute,” Luigi said. “This stuff gotta dry before I can handle anythin’ without goppin’ it up.”

  “What’s the matter? Are your hands irritated?”

  “Nope. It’s Glove Cream.”

  “What?”

  “Glove Cream,” Luigi repeated. “I’m gettin’ ready to clean some of you messy Field Team member’s guns. This stuff you just rub on, let it dry, and the grease, oil, and powder residue don’t get into your skin. Lets me do a little work on the guns if I notice they need it, and I can feel everything just like I’m not wearin’ gloves at all. When I’m all done, it just washes off with soap and water, takin’ all the grime with it. Keeps my nails pretty,” he added, grinning.

  “I see.”

  Luigi went to retrieve Amigo’s handgun. As he waited, Amigo started to think about what Luigi had said. When Luigi came back, he asked, “You say this Glove Cream doesn’t let grease and grime get to your skin. Do solvents go through it?”

  “Not that I’ve ever seen. Gun oil don’t go through it. Cleanin’ solvents don’t, either. Which is good, because some of them really stink.”

  “Stink like what?”

  “Like something with sulfur in it,” Luigi said.

  “Which ones? Show me,” Amigo said, his mind beginning to race.

  Luigi retrieved one of the cleaning solvents. “This one really reeks,” he said. “But it does a great job, so I use it.”

  Amigo looked over the ingredients on the bottle of cleaning solvent. “Luigi, can I borrow these two?” he asked, picking up the tube of Glove Cream.

  “Sure. Bring them back, though.”

  “Team, meet me in the library,” Amigo said over the comm link, the tube of Glove Cream and bottle of cleaning solvent in his hands. Making his way back through the underground complex to the library, he joined up with the others as they moved through Honor Way. Rendezvousing with them in the library, he said excitedly, “I think I know how it’s being done.”

  The rest of the team all stood around, waiting for his explanation. He set the bottle of cleaning solvent down on the table. “This is one of the things Luigi uses to clean the guns,” he said. “One of the major ingredients is DMSO.” Then he tossed the tube of Glove Cream on the table next to the cleaning solvent. “Luigi uses this stuff to keep the grime off his hands when he cleans the guns. He just rubs it on his hands and it dries. I couldn’t even see that he had it on. He says that stuff,” pointing at the solvent, “doesn’t get through it.”

  “Houston, there’s a problem here,” Voice said to the team gathered in the library. “I’ve had Hal do some face recognition of events where the President has derailed. And the Second Lady isn’t even at most of the events. In some cases, she isn’t even in Washington when the President has gone off the deep end.”

  “We know she’s involved. She has to be. She was the only one who had the kind of contact with the President that would have resulted in him getting the drug on his lips and transferring it to Hank,” Amigo said.

  “Then there’s only one conclusion we can come to,” Edge said. “She’s not the only one involved.”

  “Great. We know she’s involved, but we can’t stop her until we figure out who else is involved,” Voice said.

  “You have to figure, though,” Cloud began, “that whoever is dosing the President is doing it in a way that doesn’t transfer to someone else. Otherwise, we’d see other people going gorky at the events where he has.”

  “You got unlucky, Hank,” Amigo said. “Just your luck, the President manages to transfer some of the drug to you when he’s never done that before.”

  “Maybe because he was dosed in a way that’s never been done before,” Cloud said.

  “So, what does that mean?” Amigo asked.

  “Maybe all the other players are men.”

  “But they can’t be transferring the drug by a simple handshake. When Presidents move through groups of people, they shake just about every hand that comes their way. If he was getting the drug through a handshake, then we’d see a lot of people getting dosed,” Spud said. “We don’t.”

  “But it still has to be skin-to-skin contact,” Amigo said. “Or Glove Cream to skin contact.”

  “Voice, can we get Hal to pull up video footage of the events where the President has been drugged and see who touches him in a way that could possibly transfer the drug to him that wouldn’t result in it being transferred to someone else?”

  “Some tasks are simpler than others,” Voice said with a smile. “We can go back to the date when the President first started acting strange and just watch the videos ourselves.”

  “Hal has our video file for us,” Voice said as the team gathered in the library. “It looks like there are about two dozen events total. Everyone take notes – there’s going to be a quiz when we’re done.”

  The team sat around the monitor in the library, ready to examine the videos for all the contacts made with the President by any of the individuals present.

  “Right there,” Voice said as the team sat watching the first one. “He grabbed the President’s left wrist with his left hand. Hal, save video.”

  As they continued to watch, the team members would point out the odd contacts that were made with the President.

  “We’re starting to see the same people over and over,” Amigo observed as they reached the end of the videos. “The same five, along with the Second Lady.”

  The Secret Service gunny made note of the events himself.

  �
��It’s time you got involved,” Spud told him. “The videos are circumstantial at best. You’re going to have to actually catch each of them in the act. And if the President hasn’t been informed, then now is perhaps a good time to inform him.”

  “The difficult thing for us, as you well know, Spud, is that it appears that we will have to use the President as bait to catch these people,” the gunny said. “Allowing the President to be exposed to potential harm is not something we do.”

  “It may be a matter of some delicate timing,” Spud said. “You may not need to allow the President to be physically contacted by these people, but only allow them to approach him and have it be obvious that they intend to do so. And, of course, if one of them cares to mitigate the potential consequences of not cooperating by revealing what they know about the others’ involvement, then that will allow you to make the arrests without further risking harm to the President.”

  “Perhaps we can get the President to agree to set a meeting with all five present,” Amigo said. “And get them all at once.”

  “My dear Senators,” the President said, greeting five long-standing members of his party’s Congressional elite in the Oval office. “I’d like to thank each of you for taking time to meet today.” White House photographers snapped pictures to record the meeting.

  The President extended his hand to shake each of theirs. As he reached for one of them, the Senator reached out with both his right hand for the handshake, and his left as if to grasp the President’s wrist. Having been warned, the President withdrew his hand, and the Secret Service agent standing watch in the room stepped forward to grasp the Senator’s arm.

  “If you would come with me, Senator,” the agent said. Another agent stepped into the room as the first stepped out of the office and was met by a member of the FBI’s forensics team. The FBI specialist, with gloved hands, reached out to swab the Senator’s palm.

  The Senator jerked his hand back. “Just who do you think you are?” he demanded.