The Hunted

by Dave Zeltserman

  That made enough sense to Schoefield not to argue the point, and Willis let him lead the way. When they got to the stairs, Willis picked up the brick that he had left there when he had broken the streetlights. He held it in his right hand, but before he used it he asked Schoefield why he sold out his country.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Schoefield started, his voice surly, argumentative, like every other drunk who wants to pick a fight. Willis didn’t need to hear his answer. He had already heard enough earlier to satisfy him. He hit Schoefield with the brick hard enough to cave his skull in, and watched as Schoefield’s body crumpled forward and tumbled down the cement steps. There was no reason for Willis to check that his target was dead, not with the way Schoefield’s body lay positioned at the bottom of the steps.

  Still carrying the brick, Willis went back to Schoefield’s car to wipe off any fingerprints and to leave Schoefield’s keys in the ignition. He waited until he walked three blocks away before he dumped the brick he’d used into a sewer. Five blocks away he found the car that he earlier had arranged to be there. He waited until he was driving out of that area before calling Barry and leaving a message that Schoefield had gotten drunk and ended up stumbling and falling down a staircase, with cause of death being either a caved in skull or a broken neck. That any autopsy done would confirm that finding. Willis knew from his training at The Factory that they wouldn’t be able to distinguish that the damage done to Schoefield’s skull wasn’t caused by the cement steps.

  Before Willis arrived back at his apartment, Barry called him to tell him about his next assignment.

  “I was hoping to put in for a vacation,” Willis said. “I could use some R and R.”

  “No rest for the weary,” Barry said coldly. “It can’t be helped. This is a war we’re fighting, Willis.” His tone turned conspiratorial as he added, “And we both know you took almost two weeks off with this last one.” The line appeared to go dead for a long moment, long enough that Willis thought he had lost the connection, but Barry came back and told him he could have his vacation after he finished two more assignments. “But try not to slack on these, okay?”

  Barry ended the call without another word or giving Willis any details on his next assignment. He wouldn’t have to. The next one would be on a secure message board. The Factory didn’t want any paper trails, so Willis would have to memorize the details from the message board. It would be against Factory protocols for him to print it out or write any of it down. After Willis would disconnect from the message board, the information regarding his assignment would disappear into the ether. The Factory made damn sure none of this could get back to them. Willis couldn’t much blame them. If he ever screwed up one of these assignments and was caught by the police, he’d be on his own.

  Chapter 6

  Willis took the next four days off anyway. His next assignment had been marked as a murder. After he checked the satellite photos of the target’s home using Google Earth, he felt confident that he’d be able to get the job done in less than a week despite taking four days off so he’d still be able to earn his bonus and keep Barry off his back.

  He decided to spend those four days at the beach, but the problem was he couldn’t relax, not with the assignment hanging over his head, and also not while expecting Barry to call to break his balls. He knew his badge had a tracking chip implanted in it and that Barry had to have the GPS coordinates of where he was. But if Barry were to call him to complain, he’d be giving away that fact, which he probably wouldn’t want to do. Besides, unless he had another field agent watching the target, he’d have to accept Willis’s explanation that he had only followed the target to this beach resort as part of his surveillance.

  Each of those four days at the ocean turned out to be joyless days. He was too anxious to do something as simple as lie back and enjoy the sun, and his mind raced too much to make sense of the paperback book he tried reading. Even the sight of all the young girls in bikinis did nothing for him. This bothered him more than anything else. Ever since getting involved with The Factory, he’d lost all interest there. His second night playing hooky, he went to a strip club, and again found nothing of interest. Surrounded by naked, gyrating women, and not even a stirring. It worried him for most of his time while at the club until he decided to put it out of his mind.

  He felt a sense of relief after ending his unofficial four day vacation, and he spent the next morning hidden in the woods across from his target’s home. He found a spot about a hundred yards away where he could rest the rifle barrel against a log and have a clear view of the target’s front door. With a dark blanket underneath him and branches covering him, he was well camouflaged, and as soon as his target stepped outside, Willis would be able to track him through his rifle’s scope and explode his target’s head the same as if it were a pumpkin. This assignment would be quick and easy. One rifle shot and he would be done.

  Willis had been maintaining his vigil since five AM. At six-thirty his target emerged from the house wearing a tee shirt, shorts and running shoes, and scooting out with him was a mostly white bull terrier with a few smudges of black on its ears. As the dog stepped outside, it sniffed a couple of times in Willis’s direction and then scampered off towards him. Probably thinking the dog was running off after an animal, the target shouted at his dog, directing the bull terrier to get back to him. After a few reluctant growls, the dog scampered back to his owner’s side.

  None of this was why Willis had relaxed the pressure he’d been applying to the trigger. A thought had been gnawing at the back of his mind, something he couldn’t quite get a firm grip on, and as he had lined up his target in the rifle scope, he realized what it was. When he had earlier seen his target’s photo, the man had seemed vaguely familiar, and now Willis knew why. The target had been one of the candidates that had ridden in the van with Willis when he was driven to the Factory for his interview. He didn’t remember seeing him afterwards. The target certainly hadn’t been part of Willis’s silent training squad. Since talking wasn’t allowed among the candidates, Willis hadn’t earlier heard the target’s name or anything about him.

  Willis removed his finger from the rifle trigger. He needed to know which one it was—whether his target was a traitor who had almost infiltrated The Factory, or was he a field worker like Willis who was now being terminated. It was possible the man washed out during the interview process, but it was also possible that he had been assigned to another training squad. That Willis hadn’t seen him again during his three month training program didn’t mean that this man wasn’t currently connected to The Factory.

  Willis’s target was like a leaner and better looking version of himself. Two years younger than Willis, same height and about twenty pounds lighter. His name was Mark Foley and he had the same similar rough features that Willis had. Willis watched as Foley and his bull terrier jogged out of sight, then pushed away the branches that were covering him, grabbed the blanket he’d been using and fixed the area to erase any evidence that he’d been there. Then he moved further back into the woods so there would be less chance of that bull terrier sniffing him out. He wanted to time how long Foley’s run would be.

  Chapter 7

  Willis returned early the next morning to the woods outside of Foley’s house, this time setting up further back. Like the other morning, his target left the house at six-thirty to go on his morning run with his bull terrier. This time Willis had set up deep enough into the woods where he had to use binoculars, and while the bull terrier let out a couple of grunting-like barks, he made no attempt to take off in Willis’s direction. Once Foley and his dog were out of sight, Willis approached the house. The other day Willis had tried researching his target’s background and found precious little about him online other than a résumé that had been posted four months earlier. All Willis could glean from that was that Foley held his last position for nine months before being laid off four months ago, and that he had been working as an account executive for a
n advertising agency.

  The Factory never included background information on their targets. Only a name, a photo, an address with accompanying security alarm information, and whether the target lived alone or not. According to what they had posted on the bulletin board for Foley he lived alone, which was inadequate. They should’ve known about the dog so they could’ve warned Willis about it. If they missed that, it was possible they could also have missed a new girlfriend or other recent overnight company. Willis was careful not to make any noise as he used his burglar picks to break into Foley’s house. He saw that Foley’s security alarm had been activated and he used the code that The Factory had provided, and that did the trick in disarming it. The fact that the alarm had been set meant no one else was there, but Willis still moved quietly to verify that. Then he went about looking for evidence that would indicate whether Foley was an insurgent who needed to be eliminated or a Factory field agent that needed retiring. While he found out that Foley was divorced and paying child support to his ex who now lived on the other side of the country and that Foley had served in the Marines, he didn’t find anything to answer the big question. It didn’t surprise him that Foley was ex-military. He expected that The Factory recruited mostly ex-military. He also found Foley’s day planner and noted the time and location of a meeting that Foley had scheduled in two days.

  Yesterday Foley had been gone for an hour and fifteen minutes for his run—if that was what he was really doing. It was possible that he was instead meeting a contact with the insurgency. Whichever it was, Willis was giving himself forty-five minutes to search the house and then he’d get out of there, and when his watch buzzed him that his time had expired, he reset the security alarm and left the house. He didn’t bother going back into the woods. If Foley was running the same route as the other day Willis would be able to watch him from his car.

  ##

  Willis spent the next day watching Foley without learning anything. He could’ve ended things easily by waiting in the woods with his rifle and blowing Foley’s head off as he went for his morning run, but he didn’t do it. He gave himself the excuse that he wanted a chance to get the truth out of Foley, find out which it was with him. But if it was just that Willis could’ve slipped into Foley’s house when the man went on his run, then put the dog down when they returned and have plenty of time to interrogate his target. But he didn’t do that either. Instead he chose a much riskier and more difficult plan, and one where he’d be throwing away his bonus. He didn’t understand why he was doing that. He wasn’t one for sentiment. So what was it? Why was he so reluctant to kill a man’s dog in front of him?

  The following day while Willis drove to the location so he could carry out his plan, he cursed himself out for the harebrained scheme he had settled on. He swore to himself that he wasn’t going to take any chances. If any glitches showed up, he’d abandon the plan and take care of his assignment the smart way by waiting inside the target’s home the next morning for when Foley and his bull terrier would return from their early morning run. Since he knew about Foley’s scheduled appointment, both the time and place it would be, he was able to make a good guess on the route that Foley would drive. He had scoped out the area and found a more or less deserted stretch along that route that was made up of abandoned warehouses. Once he got to that deserted area he pulled over and waited for Foley. If Foley drove by and there was no other traffic, Willis would go through with his harebrained scheme. If Foley took a different route then that would be that and Willis would have to take care of the matter the next day.

  Willis sat anxiously for the next twenty minutes, cursing himself some more for the sentimentality he was showing. Time was running out. If Foley was keeping his appointment and driving along the route Willis expected him to, he should’ve been there already. Willis was right about how deserted the area was. In the twenty minutes he’d been camped out there, only eight other cars had passed him. He was about to give up when he spotted Foley’s car in his rear view mirror.

  Willis swung into action then, pulling away from the curb as Foley passed him, then gunning the engine so he could catch up to Foley and force him off the road and onto a side street. This street was even more desolate than the main drag with only boarded up factory buildings with shattered windows leading to a dead end. Foley had to swing the front end of his car onto a sidewalk littered with garbage and broken glass to keep from being hit. Willis angled his car behind Foley’s to keep him boxed in.

  They both left their cars at the same moment, Foley’s door slamming shut, Willis’s closing quietly. Foley was hot under the collar and too angry to realize what was happening and that he was already little more than a dead man. With his right hand clenched into a fist he took two steps towards Willis, shouting, “What the fuck is your problem?” Then he stopped as he noticed the tire iron Willis held. He started smirking then as if he thought this was only a robbery and the joke would be on Willis when he saw how little money he had, but the smirk died quickly. Just as Willis had recognized him the other day through the end of a rifle scope, Foley must’ve realized why Willis looked familiar and where he had seen him before. Almost as if a switch had been thrown his color paled. In a scared, panicky way he looked around and realized he was trapped with buildings on both sides and behind him and Willis in front of him. For an instant it looked like he was going to try running or fighting, but then his eyes deadened and he stood glumly with his shoulders slumping. Without much to his voice he asked Willis what he was waiting for.

  “Are you working for The Factory?” Willis asked.

  Foley laughed. It was a weak laugh, not much too it. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why me?” His eyes shifted away from Willis and his head lowered as if he were waiting for the executioner’s blow.

  “Why?” Willis demanded. “Because either you’re a traitor or you’re one of us and you screwed up badly. Which is it?”

  Foley shook his head in response, his eyes cast down toward his feet. Willis moved in to hit Foley with the tire iron. Foley tried blocking the blow with one arm while stepping toward Willis so he could elbow him in the groin, but Willis had been expecting some sort of move from his target, and so he moved quickly and swept Foley’s feet out from under him, sending him hard onto the pavement. Then he smashed the tire iron into Foley’s right knee, shattering it.

  “Which is it?” Willis demanded again.

  Foley lay on his back and grabbed his damaged knee, his eyes squeezed shut, his face locked in a rigor of pain. Then in response to Willis’s question he started laughing a wheezing, sickly laugh.

  Willis hit him several more times with the tire iron breaking more bones with each strike, but all Foley did was laugh his sickly, wheezing laugh that was sounding more and more like a broken garbage disposal that was about to die out. He refused to answer Willis’s questions. They’d been on that side street for no more than three minutes, and while it seemed unlikely anyone driving by would notice them, especially with the way they were blocked out by their parked cars, Willis decided he’d been there long enough. There was always the chance that some curious cop might drive by. Besides, it was appearing even less likely he’d get anything out of his target. With a couple more blows from the tire iron he finished him off.

  He searched Foley’s pockets and found his keys. After moving his car, he swung Foley’s older model Ford around so it was parked properly and the rear of it was left less than a foot from Foley’s body. After popping the trunk open, he first wrapped Foley’s head with a towel so he wouldn’t get any blood on himself, then he dumped Foley’s corpse into the trunk and closed it. After that he pulled the remote for Foley’s garage door opener off the sun visor.

  When Willis got back in his car and drove away, he started cursing himself for what he was going to do next, which he knew made no sense. Why should he care whether a dog starved to death or died of dehydration? It was stupid to put himself at risk like he was going to be doing. It was only more sentimentality on his
part, and he didn’t understand it and was disgusted by it, but he still drove back to Foley’s house.

  As he pulled into Foley’s driveway, he used the remote to open the garage door, then drove in and shut the door behind him. He then used Foley’s keys to open the door connecting the garage to the house. He knew there was only minimal chance that he had been seen driving into the garage. Foley’s house was at the end of a cul-de-sac with woods bordering it, and Willis had watched the area long enough to know that at this time of the day the neighbors would be at work. Still, even though it was only a small chance, it was more than he should’ve been willing to take.

  From the back of the house, a fierce barking and growling started. Willis entered the security code on a panel next to the door to disable the alarm system, then followed the noise to a laundry room where the bull terrier was crated. Even though the dog was seventy-five pounds of solid muscle and had a powerful jaw that could kill, Willis wasn’t concerned. Dogs were pack animals and Willis would be the alpha male within any pack of dogs or men. With a steely eye fixed on the dog, he ordered it to stop and the dog submissively obeyed him. Willis opened the crate and the dog came out meekly, his tail between his legs.

  Willis originally was going to let the dog out of the house so the animal could find someone to take him in, but instead Willis started doing something even stupider that could put him at an even greater risk. He found a garbage bag in the kitchen and went through the house throwing all evidence of the dog’s existence into the bag. Dog food, treats, toys, water bowl, food bowl, leash, photos, anything he could find. As he did this the dog followed close to his heel. Once he had the bag filled up, he went back to the crate, collapsed it, then carried it and the bag into the garage. He put the bag in his trunk and the collapsed crate into his backseat. He opened the passenger seat, and the dog jumped in. Then using the remote he opened the garage door, drove out into the driveway, closed the door and drove away.