by Marcus Wynne
Mark Wayne was an eccentric and reclusive on again, off again contractor for different elements of the intelligence and special operations community; he was a brilliant training designer with a gift for undercover operations. He was also, despite his willed anonymity, one of the world’s leading authorities on the combat applications of neural linguistic programming, and, to Hunter’s thinking, better qualified than any shrink to deal with the black fog that filled his mind since Flight 923.
One night, while they sat drinking beer on the front steps of his battered, run down house near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, Mark wiped the condensation from his bottle and said, “You know…there’s this thing. Guys like you and me…we’re all about what we can do. Our physicality. Not who we are without that, we don’t even think about that. We are what we do. We fight. We exert force for good. And there’s this thing that happens when guys like us hit our forties…age starts creeping up. I remember when it happened to me. We start working out harder, dressing younger, chasing younger women…it’s because for the first time we get this hint of mortality, just over the hill. And to get slammed in the middle of that the way you did, brother…the injuries are bad enough. But to walk right up to death’s door, and then come back? And to have to deal with the weakness. When I had my bout with the C, that was the hardest thing, to be so weak I couldn’t fight, not really, for the first time ever in my life. Depressing. Leads to this endless loop we have to break out of. It’s important to be engaged, to be immersed in something. I had my work, my research. You, you’ve got your job. It’s who you are. Right now, any way. If you’re not done, don’t leave. Find a way to stay. But if you choose to go, don’t go without having something to go to. You’ve got a lot of years left in you, Hunter, and all that experience and training you carry around – that’s of value. Precious value. You remember that.”
And as Hunter limped his way through the crowded terminal, he reminded himself. I have value. I still have value.
Want to see my Felix?
He crushed that thought away and looked up at the terminal ceiling. Hidden among the struts and braces and light fixtures above were dozens of “mini-cams” that covered every possible angle on the ticket counters, and fed the images into a state of the art control center deep beneath the airport. The streaming images were run through a super fast computer system that compared facial geometry to faces in the enormous Department of Justice database of known and suspected terrorists. There were hits every day in O’Hare. Some of them false, but often enough a real hit, and those were paraded out as evidence for the usefulness of the system, despite the blinding costs.
And the costs of the “improvements” in security were significant.
The public outcry after Flight #923 was enormous. Despite ten years of post 9/11 “improvements,” intensive screening, and the presence of a full team of Federal Air Marshals, the hijacking had nearly succeeded, and that scared every single member of the traveling public, just as their confidence had begun to return. As was usual with the government, millions of dollars were thrown at the problem and highly publicized “solutions” were rushed into place without any critical thinking or evaluation of their actual long term effectiveness. Millions upon millions spent, but the politicians and bureaucrats fought over the very concept of “racial profiling,” anathema to the American public, or so the political perception went. As Hunter was prone to point out, it wasn’t as though we were being hijacked by the Norwegians. It was just common sense, but there was a shortage of that among elected officials, who swung whichever way the media and the polls told them.
The politically safe compromise was the measure of placing “trained profilers” in front of the ticket counters, a practice long used overseas but resisted by the airlines for use domestically. The profilers met each passengers with a long battery of questions designed to determine a potential threat. Anyone who roused suspicions was routed for further inquiry and evaluation by supervisors and Air Marshals, and everyone was run through the new CAPPS 3 computerized check, which was updated constantly with new names from the watch lists and drew from massive private sector databases that compiled everything from credit reports and financial analysis to the books you read and the magazines you subscribed to. All that data was crunched to give you a score like a credit score. If your score was high enough, you became a “person of interest.” It was a fine example of the American emphasis on spending money for technology – and it wasn’t widely reported that if the hijackers from Flight #923 had been run through CAPPS 3, they would have had a lower “security score” than some of the Air Marshals. The system wasn’t particularly good at spotting real operators. Despite the arrogance of the institutions and operators in deriding terrorists as “rag heads,” those “rag heads” had mounted significant special operations with minimal funding and resources on 9/11 and Flight 923.
And they’d done pretty damn well.
Hunter stepped around a pile of brand new luggage dumped at the end of the long line snaking up to the American counter. A fine example of the suburban American family stood there, ready for their trip: mom, harried but still attractive in a blond former cheerleader way; dad a high school football player gone to fat on his big bones, but still with an athlete’s alertness; the regulation two kids, a boy and a girl in the best from the Land’s End Kid’s Catalog.
The boy was maybe four, Hunter thought.
“This line is long!” the boy said. He looked at Hunter. “Why are you limping?”
“Billy!” the mother said. “That’s not nice. Don’t bother the man.”
Hunter stopped and grinned. “Because I’m old, partner.”
“Do you want me to help you?” Billy offered.
“No thanks, buddy,” Hunter said. “That was very nice of you to offer, though.” He smiled briefly at them and walked away, the smile slipping from his face.
Want to see my Felix the Cat?
There’s a technique drawn from neural linguistic programming that deals with unwanted memories – you take the image, make it black and white, then shrink it down till it disappears in a little whoosh…Hunter used it. Again.
He was having a hard time keeping his mind in the game, and that was another reason he didn’t want to be flying, to have to deal with even the remote possibility of confronting another gunfight situation…
We don’t do it because anybody cares. We do it because it’s who and what we are. We’re the war dogs prowling the perimeter around the sheep, we’re the ones who come when the wolves are out, we’re the ones who run to the sound of guns…
That’s what Raven would have said.
But then, he wasn’t Raven, was he?
Hunter eased himself down onto a padded bench and relaxed slowly, letting his weight drop. He was pleased with his recovery. He’d been exercising gingerly for months now: intervals on the Nordic track, since running was no longer an option, and brisk walks along the Lake Michigan shore helped trim the flab that had accumulated after long weeks in bed. For strength, he worked with his bodyweight, doing the Matt Furey Combat Conditioning program. And almost immediately, he took his training blades out and began moving gently through the practice routines that would once again make him supple and fast.
Like a cat.
Hunter relaxed his eyes, expanding his peripheral vision, and let the rhythm of the crowd flow in front of him. That was one of the many tricks he’d learned from Raven, an easy way of allowing the unconscious mind to sort out the information filtering into the brain, while letting the fine-honed threat ID system he carried in his head identify any possible problems.
Nothing.
Just harried travelers. If they had anything in common, it was their apprehension after coming through random car checks, past armed police officers patrolling outside and inside the terminal, to long lines snaking up to the officious profilers, before passing on to the ticket agents and then dragging their bags to the x-ray machines and explosive detectors. Then it was more long lines
at the security checkpoints, where they showed their Ids and emptied their pockets and took off their shoes and went through the often humiliating process of being poked and prodded and patted.
Maybe they felt safe afterwards, though they didn’t see the plain clothes police patrolling the concourses, or the Federal Air Marshals mingling with the boarding passengers, or the armed pilots and the web of computers that linked the security puzzle together.
Those passengers wouldn’t be happy to know that there were still probes and explorations of the system, that there were known terrorist players in the nation’s airports every day. O’Hare got plenty, being the third largest city in the country, and site of the busiest airport. The soft border with Canada was an issue, and the large Arab community in Chicago. There were local mosques, with affiliations to terrorist organizations, doing fund raising under the guise of humanitarian assistance. Those mosques provided haven for terrorist operators on occasion. But the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, and houses of worship were out of bounds to the surveillance crews that worked night and day tracking terrorists through the country. It was a tenet of Al-Qaida’s operational doctrine to utilize and exploit the inherent vulnerabilities of a free society. So they protested against surveillance of their fund-raising operations and protested against profiling on basis of race and religious affiliation, with the help of expensive lawyers from the ACLU who gladly worked pro bono.
Hunter didn’t like to dwell on that. It was just another indication of his unrest. He was an operator, not a politician or an administrator. The Service wanted to bump him up in pay grade, which would put behind a desk, but for once he’d been politically savvy enough to use his moment of fame to ensure that he stayed an operator…though he had agreed to take an in grade pay increase. He didn’t know what to do with the money he had stacking up in his savings and mutual fund account. He owned his townhouse outright, and it was furnished, in the words of the last girl he’d dated, before the battle on Flight #923, in “cave man basic.” Books, knives, and cases for those occupied most of his spending, and the rest went to cover those few uncovered medical expenses like extra physical therapy, alternative and complementary approaches like acupuncture, massage, reflexology – anything that might get him back on track.
It was working.
He took a deep breath, and told himself that it wasn’t useful to stew in a funk; it was better to keep his mind on the job, mundane as it might be.
Develop intuitive judgment and understanding for everything. That’s what Musashi would say. Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
Hunter smiled at the memory of Raven solemnly uttering his precepts. And then the older man would burst out laughing, drop Hunter a wink, and make some ribald comment. But the words stuck, just like the book had, once Hunter took the time to read it.
He could work on his understanding, that’s for sure.
Want to see my Felix the Cat?
Hunter exhaled sharply through his nostrils, slowly rotated his neck, eased himself back on the padded bench and slowly turned at the waist, stretching the tight muscles at the base of his spine. Was time to get a massage, deep tissue, this time.
A man got off the escalator and strode resolutely towards the long American Airlines line. Hunter clocked him automatically: black male, late forties early fifties, medium build, not in shape, not terribly out of shape, 5 feet 10 inches, maybe 170-185 pounds, close cropped hair speckled with gray, polo shirt and jeans, lace up cordovan shoes. He carried a bulging black leather writing portfolio, the kind that lawyers take notes in. It seemed an unusual piece of gear for a man to be carrying, when he had no other luggage with him.
Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
Some things can be seen only by the trained man who looks for them. Something about this man’s carriage, the way he held his shoulders, the way he scanned the crowd…he was looking for someone. And he kept shifting the leather portfolio in his hands. His physiology was off. Hunter had years of experience in reading body language, and had further honed his skills with the excellent training programs provided by Dr. Ekman on deception and violence cues. And while no one is perfect, Hunter was pretty damn good at it. There’s a palpable change of energy in the air when violence is brewing, and Hunter knew that well, went to it like a fire fighter runs towards the fire instead of away.
Something was wrong here.
Hunter eased to his feet, slowly looked around the terminal, disguising his 360 degree scan as a leisurely stretch. At the far end of the terminal, two uniformed police officers in full tactical battle clothing stood chatting, their MP-5 submachine guns slung. The man with the portfolio was alone; no one with him that Hunter could see. The man walked along the line in front of the American ticket counter, then paused.
Hunter eased slowly into the man’s wake, lingering beside the slim cover of a concrete pillar and looked for the closest back-up. He turned up the volume on the tiny radio set he carried in his pocket, the wireless ear-bud nearly invisible in his ear, and the pinhead microphone laced into the breast pleat of his blazer.
He whispered, “302 to base, American Airlines counter, back-up.”
“Roger 302, American Airlines counter, back up enroute.”
Down the terminal, the two uniformed cops straightened and looked down the sweep of counters in Hunter’s direction.
The black man stopped. Hunter saw adrenaline rise in the man, who zipped open his leather portfolio and drew out a pistol, a big Government Model Colt 1911 .45 automatic, and a Mk-26 hand grenade. Hunter’s stomach dropped with the sudden dump of adrenaline that raced through his system. Hunter’s hand brushed his blazer out of the way, and yanked his Sig free, mated with the off hand at his chest and punched it out at the man with the grenade and the .45.
The suburban family with the friendly little boy walked right in front of Hunter; they were completely oblivious to the action taking place on both sides of them.
Except for the little boy.
His eyes grew round and his mouth dropped open. “Mommy! That man has a gun!”
The parents looked up, and the woman screamed.
The black man stepped up to the line of passengers which parted like the Red Sea before Moses, and a couple in their thirties, pale, dressed in leather like Gothic musicians, looked up with shock in their eyes. Calmly, taking his time, the black man shot them each twice in the head, the massive blast of the gun masking the strike of the bullets at close range.
“Get down!” Hunter shouted. He hooked the family out of the way, but froze, just for an instant, at the look of terror in the little boy’s face. “It’s all right!” Hunter said, “It’s…”
People scattered, trampling down the ropes and poles forming the line. The two uniformed cops came at a sprint, unslinging their MP-5s.
The black man stepped over the bodies of the two people he’d just shot, grabbed a woman and held her in front of him. The man’s moves were languid, relaxed, as though he’d rehearsed this very thing. Hunter closed in, his weapon locked on the man, whose arm was tight around the woman’s throat, the hand grenade in his hand, the pistol in the other.
“Don’t do it!” Hunter shouted. “Let her go!”
The man’s eyes were wide, slightly yellowed, but there was a sense of a crazy calm about him, a quivering stillness Hunter recognized, the body language of the committed. The man dropped his pistol to the ground, a metallic thunk clear to Hunter even over the shouts and screams of fleeing passengers. Then he pushed the woman at Hunter, who reached and grabbed her firmly by the arm and muscled her behind him. The two cops were almost there, locking their sights on the man.
“He’s got a grenade!” Hunter shouted.
The first cop, the larger of the two, cursed as he stopped, and tucked his submachine gun firmly into his shoulder.
The man stared directly into Hunter’s eyes. Then he looked down at the two dead passengers, and nodded. He brought the grenade up to chest level and hooked
his finger through the pin, already straightened.
“STOP!” Hunter shouted. “Just stop, man! Let’s talk…”
“Too late for talk,” the man said, his voice relaxed, almost conversational. “It’s time for me.” He smiled. “Callie? I’m coming, honey…”
And he pulled the pin.
“Get back!” Hunter shouted. He dove over the padded bench behind the concrete pillar while the two cops turned and ran. As though in slow motion, he saw the man drop the pin, the arming lever fly off and then the man wrapped both hands tightly around the grenade and brought it to his neck. Seconds ticked by, and Hunter clocked each one while everything else seemed to slow: people scrambling away, the screams of bystanders, the slow tick of the electronic clock behind the ticket counter.
The man dropped to his knees and huddled over the grenade.
The explosion came just after Hunter turned his back to the blast and cupped his hands over his ears, mouth open. The concussion blew out the plate glass windows nearest to him, or perhaps that was because of body parts or skull fragments.
Hunter stood, his ears ringing, and checked himself for fragmentation wounds.
Nothing.
There was a bloody smear beside the smoldering torso spouting blood from the massive wound where the head had been.
Hunter stood there, his gun loose in his hand. Far off, he could hear children screaming.
Down the concourse, a young, dark-skinned man in expensive sport clothes focused his Canon Mini-DV recorder in on Hunter, with the smoldering corpse in the foreground. Hunter turned, and the man zoomed the lens in for a tight close up of the anguish on the Air Marshal’s face. The dark-skinned man let the tape run till the Air Marshal was obscured by the responding police officers.
Then he lowered his camera, turned it off, and walked calmly out of the terminal, surrounded by screaming passengers fleeing who paid him no mind at all.