by Michael Todd
I look forward to meeting up with you soon.
Anderson.
Savage fanned the money and saw that there were five crisp thousand-dollar bills in his hand. Well, at least my new employer has some cash to spare. He shook his head and tucked it into his pocket as he sensed someone standing beside him. He immediately recognized the man who wore a suit and tie instead of the uniform Jeremiah had seen him wearing however long ago it had been.
“LC,” he said with a smile and stood to take the man’s proffered hand. “I would have assumed that you were long gone by now. There’s so much more you can do in bases all around the world instead of in some black site hospital in…where are we again?”
“Somewhere in West Virginia,” LC said with a chuckle. “Sorry, I can’t get any more specific than that. There’s a ride coming to pick you up and drop you off where Anderson can help you out, but you’ll have a bag over your head for most of the trip. I know that for guys like you, that’s barely a handicap, but still, the bosses don’t want to make it too easy.”
“How about you?” Savage asked and folded his arms when he saw a black SUV pull up close to the hospital. “Where will you go after this?”
“I would feed you some bullshit about how if I told you, I’d have to kill you,” the man said, “but if the truth be told, they haven’t told me yet. Military Intelligence isn’t a clean-cut job, you know. My superiors told me to keep an eye on you and make sure you made it out of the hospital all right. They didn’t exactly lay out what I would do afterward.”
Savage nodded. “Well, I’m not sure if I needed to be babysat like that, but…I appreciate it.”
LC chuckled. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve worked with Anderson before. You know, back when he was still a colonel, and a couple of times back when he was an operative in MARSOC too. He’s a good person. I’m not saying you should trust him, but he has the best interests of our fellow men in uniform at heart.”
The two men shook again. “Go out there and do dark deeds to darker people,” LC said with a smile. “And know that there are some of us who’ll sleep better knowing about it.”
Savage chuckled. “You take care of yourself, LC.”
The driver of the SUV stepped out of the car, a black bag in his hands. He handed it to Savage, who stepped into the vehicle and pulled it over his head without protest. He had expected something like this, and while LC seemed to think that he could probably find his way back, there wasn’t much in the world that would make him want to return to this place. It was best to simply comply and leave this whole chapter of his life behind him.
LC smiled and watched the SUV pull away down the single road that led away from the facility before he turned and walked back inside. He was curious as to where he would go next. It wasn’t like he’d had the time of his life stuck there looking after wounded veterans. It wasn’t a terrible job but not the most inspiring either.
Then again, he was curious as to what the newly-minted Jeremiah Savage would do with his old friend Anderson calling the very literal shots.
Chapter Five
He was allowed to remove the bag a few hours into the trip. The driver understood that neither of them would head back to the damn hospital, so they merely had to do enough to satisfy the letter of the law. Jeremiah wasn’t sure what part of the military the man had been in, but damned if they didn’t know how to find a whole lot of them to work in the private sector. It was like the government didn’t do much to take care of the veterans once they were out of the service or something.
They arrived in a small town as the sun was setting. The lights of a larger city gleamed in the distance. Jeremiah had spent most of his life on the West Coast, so he was somewhat lost as to where he was. LC had said something about West Virginia, but other than that, he simply had no clue where they might be now.
“What city is that?” he asked the driver as they pulled up beside a motel. It was one of those low-slung, concrete-block affairs with an outdated sign picturing a woman in a one-piece swimsuit poised over an aquamarine swimming pool. Beyond the sign, the liver-shaped pool in question was bone dry with a broken diving board that hung precariously over one end.
“Philly,” the man said and didn’t look at him as he put the SUV into park. “That’s where you’ll go later, but Anderson wanted you situated and comfortable before you get into the meat of what your situation is. Here…” He handed Jeremiah a small, ancient-looking flip phone and a key with the number twenty-seven on it. Savage stared at the piece of tech.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.
“That’s how he will contact you,” the driver said with a small smile. “He’s a little paranoid and with good reason. Now, get the fuck out of my car.”
“Right.” He heaved himself out of the vehicle and into the parking lot. He had barely closed the door behind him before the massive engine roared to life again. The man put the vehicle into drive and it cruised out of the motel’s parking lot.
At that moment, Savage felt the phone vibrate in his hand. Whoever had programmed it had apparently done so with as little noise as possible in mind. He could understand their frame of mind, all things considered.
He flipped the device open and pressed the accept call button. It didn’t respond to his first touch, which made him growl softly with irritation as he pressed it again, more insistently this time. The screen showed an accepted call. “I’m very happy with my current phone plan, actually, so stop calling,” he said as he pressed the piece to his ear.
“I’m sorry?” Anderson’s now familiar voice said.
“I’m joking,” he said with a chuckle. “How can I help you, Anderson? And why the hell are we talking through this piece of tech that was ancient ten years ago?”
“Right,” the man said. “Sorry. My friend is rather paranoid when it comes to technology. Most modern tracking systems don’t work with that flip phone, which will work as a pre-paid burner for you at the moment. While there’s nothing illegal happening between us yet, I don’t want to be caught on the back foot if something were to go horribly wrong. Are you with me so far?”
Jeremiah shook his head and snorted softly. “You’re really not that comfortable with all this cloak and dagger bullshit, are you?”
“Not particularly, no,” the former colonel admitted. “But I’m more than willing to overlook that fact so long as we have results. Now, are you at the motel yet?”
He nodded but remembered that Anderson couldn’t see him. “Yes, I’m looking for my room now.”
“Room twenty-seven has been paid for three weeks in advance. Should you need more time there, the company credit card has already been authorized to pay for any further expenditures,” his new boss advised him as he climbed the outside steps of the building that led to what he assumed was his room.
“Nice digs,” he said and inspected his surroundings. The place wasn’t terrible, but it had obviously been chosen due to the very clandestine nature that most of the patrons preferred. A credit card would have been asked for, but not IDs. He slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. The queen-sized bed looked reasonably clean, although he made a note to never bring a black light in there. He didn’t doubt that the whole place would glow like a Jackson Pollock painting.
“There’s a safe inside the closet in the room,” Anderson said. “Inside, you’ll find some fake IDs. I know that the government provided you with something new as well, but I thought you might want to save that to burn on your own, even though Jeremiah Johnson is still dead and won’t come back anytime soon.”
“That is correct,” Savage said with a small grin and opened the closet door. “What’s the passcode?”
“It’s five-five-five-five,” said another voice, one he didn’t recognize—a woman’s voice with a hint of a Russian accent. “The people you sent didn’t bother to change it from the factory-setting code. It’s a little worrying but considering that there wasn’t much time between the dro
p and Savage’s arrival, it’s understandable.”
“Hi,” he said and typed the four digits quickly into the keypad. The safe beeped and clicked open. “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh,” Anderson grunted. “Savage, this is Anja. Anja, Jeremiah Savage.”
“Nice to meet…meet you? Is that right?” He peered deeper into the safe.
“Meet works, although I don’t think we’ll actually meet in person within the foreseeable future,” Anja said. “Inside the safe, you’ll find a driver’s license from Illinois, along with a passport with a matching name and Social, a couple more burner phones should you need to discard the one that you’re speaking into right now—or if you feel the need to extend your web of contacts to people you don’t trust. Oh, and there’s also a selection of non-sequential bills in there that should amount to a little over ten thousand dollars.”
Jeremiah nodded and changed the factory passcode on the safe. While the weak software on these things wouldn’t deter a skilled hacker, every little measure of safety was welcome. And it wasn’t like he could simply carry this shit around with him everywhere he went.
“I’m afraid that we can’t be seen to fraternize for a little while,” Anderson said as he sealed the safe again. “I’ll have too many eyes and ears on me over the next couple of weeks and maybe longer. While I do need you to cover my back, I hope you understand that we’ll have to maintain some pretenses. I’d rather we keep you as an unknown quantity among the people you’ll work against for as long as possible. We’ll use the burner phones for now.”
He nodded. “We should probably alternate between them as much as possible to make sure that nobody who might be tracking your lines can pin me down to any one number.”
“A reasonable precaution,” Anja interjected. He could hear someone talking in the background, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. All he could identify were two voices arguing.
“We have about twenty-four hours before I’ll need you to be present at the Pegasus facility,” his boss said as Anja cut out of the conversation. “At that point, my benefactor will announce the change of the guard at Pegasus. She’ll bust everyone’s fucking mind when she takes over and puts me in place. I assume that all sorts of shit will come at me from the board, so you should as well. I’ll need you to figure out who is good and who is waiting to see what scraps are left. Do you think you can handle that?”
“I think I can, although I will need something of a vantage point to watch over them and you,” Savage said as he dropped onto the bed and tugged his pack closer.
“We’ll figure that out when the time comes. Until then, you need to lay low. I imagine that it’s been a while since you’ve had some shore leave, so I suggest that you use these twenty-four hours to get used to being back in the US. Enjoy yourself. Do a little shopping like I detailed earlier in my letter. Relax and try to rest. You may not have time to fully heal once we get started.”
“A quick question before I get to enjoy my day of freedom,” Jeremiah said as he counted the stacks of bills he’d pulled from the safe. “You are aware that I’m not an actual intelligence operative, right? My training was all about killing people, not discovering their secrets.”
“Like I said when we met,” Anderson replied, “I don’t need you to dig into people’s lives. I need you to use your training to find out what will happen at the board meeting—to find anyone who plans to harm us and harm them first. Besides, I assume that you’ve learned how to infiltrate a hostile environment and collect intel, right?”
Savage nodded. “Well…yeah, I suppose you’re right. But I struggle to see how those skills translate into something like a civilized society.”
“I have the utmost trust in your abilities,” his boss said. “You have all the training you’ll need.”
Jeremiah grabbed the pad of paper and a pen from the bedside table to take notes. “I’ll need access to the building, you know—oh, and access to the security cameras.”
“I can get you inside,” Anderson assured him. “I have some contacts who work security for the building and can get you an ID badge and entry. Everything else, you’ll have to do on your own with help from Anja, who will track communications in and out of the building. We’ll need you in place to see who it is that’s communicating and get a bead on them immediately. But don’t worry about that now, Jeremiah. For today, worry about getting rested and ready for tomorrow, do you understand?”
“I do,” he replied. “Catch you on the flip side.”
He pressed the button to end the call and continued to make notes of everything he would need for what would come tomorrow. He knew that any fake ID he had wouldn’t stand up against a background check—which, as he recalled, was necessary for the purchase of firearms around there. He had worked so long in the military where most of his equipment had simply been fed to him as he needed it. Now, there he was, in need and with nobody to provide.
Jeremiah took a deep breath, set the pen and pad aside, tugged the top three sheets off the pad, and crumpled them in his fist. Admittedly, he was old-school and more than a little paranoid, but he was now in a world of cloak and dagger bullshit, which meant that there was no such thing as too careful.
That said, there really wasn’t any law that kept him stuck in this damned building, so he might as well get out there and enjoy his freedom for as long as it lasted.
He tucked a couple of the bills into his pocket along with the white envelope and one of the fake IDs. A few fliers in his apartment gave him an overview of what kind of nightlife entertainment could be found in the area. He would avoid the titty bars since it was Sunday and he didn’t want to spend too much of his time pressed up against sweaty, panting assholes.
No. He’d go out for a beer, a steak, some fries, and maybe splurge and get himself a lava cake. He deserved it at this point, right?
First, he needed a rental car, so he called a taxi service and waited impatiently for a bruised-looking yellow sedan to pull up to his door. He got in and watched as Old Yeller made its way onto a side road and turned onto a freeway that took him into the city. It was a fine, cool afternoon, and sunlight glinted off the city’s skyscrapers. The taxi stopped in front of a Hertz Rent-A-Car and he paid the driver and exited.
He browsed the parking lot and saw a good-looking, silver Toyota Avalon with all the bells and whistles he could ever need for a night on the town—specifically, a built-in nav system with directions to Stone Brothers on 33rd St. He went inside and used his fake ID to rent the car for forty-eight hours. The transaction complete, he slid behind the wheel, turned the key, and activated the navigation system for directions.
A woman’s voice spoke into the JBL speakers. “Stone Brother’s Men’s Wear, on 33rd and Pike St. Please turn left at the first stoplight,” she purred, and Jeremiah grinned in appreciation.
“Sure thing, darlin’,” he whispered and moved out into traffic. He turned left and followed the lady’s instructions until he entered a lovely, tree-lined boulevard in the center of town. Looking around, he knew he was in the monied part of the city where only the wealthiest clients ever shopped.
Frowning, Jeremiah couldn’t help but think that big money often went hand-in-hand with big crime and wondered if this place wasn’t too flamboyant for such a secretive operation. Still, he saw normal foot-traffic on the sidewalks, including some plain folks who seemed to be average citizens with little money of their own. Rubber-neckers, maybe, cruising the good life. Deciding that it was safe enough, he left the vehicle and walked across the street to Stone Brothers.
Once inside, he gazed about in wonder and realized why there was five thousand dollars in the envelope. Some of the suits on display were twice that much. He wandered toward the back of the store and noticed that the prices decreased the farther back he went. Finally, he stopped and stared at a male mannequin wearing a light-gray suit, white shirt, and deep maroon tie. The price tag read nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars—on sale.
; Sheesh, he thought and went to find a sales clerk. Happily, the suit fit fine and needed no alterations, so he bought it, along with three white dress shirts, a couple of ties, some black socks, and a pair of black dress shoes. It came to a grand total of $2,439.67. He gathered the suit and packages and fled for his life.
From there, he went to a nearby Macy’s store and selected the rest of his wardrobe—jeans, a pair of Nikes, two pairs of chinos, and an assortment of Polo shirts. Underwear, socks, and a good pair of Ray Bans made the sales clerk smile as he piled everything on the counter. Once he’d paid for the items, he asked the man if it would be all right to change into one of his new outfits before he left the store and the clerk nodded and held onto the sales receipt as proof that he didn’t steal the new duds.
Finally, Jeremiah stepped outside into the falling dusk and studied himself in the building’s windows. He smirked. Well, if it ain’t Richie Rich, live and in person!
Finally, his stomach growled a protest and he worked out that he had enough cash left to buy a really great steak and an even better beer. Hell, forget the lava cake. Maybe he’d have enough to get himself a crème brûlée—or whatever the high and mighties called it.
Chapter Six
Jeremiah spent the remainder of his time off goofing around, eating too much, and taking long naps. On the following afternoon, he was called to a garage on the south end of the city and met up with a team of nine other men. He looked around as he stepped out of his rental car and grimaced when the men cracked insider jokes. Jeremiah hated insider jokes. Well, he hated them when he wasn’t a part of them, but at this point, there wasn’t much to decipher. They discussed one of the men who’d had a blow job from a stripper hired for his bachelor party. Someone had taken pictures and the wife found out about it.