by Rick Jones
“One who is morally corrupt. He’s a man who intimidates others with threats of persecution. This isn’t Salem, Kimball. Senator Cartwright has become the rot at the apple’s core. And if that rot is not contained or cut out, does not the rest of the apple eventually rot away?” For the moment Kimball appeared to be standing at a crossroads of decision. “There’s nothing to think about, Kimball,” stated the Senator, “nothing to question. You’re an operative who works as a black-ops arm of the Company who is mandated to oppose any threats to the United States government from divisions that are within and beyond our borders.” Kimball still hesitated, which prompted a much harsher tone from the senator. “Like I said, Kimball, there’s nothing to question. I need you to neutralize a threat. And I’m not asking, either.” Kimball looked the senator in the eyes. They had lost their congenial softness when he first entered the office. Now they were hardened and full of authority, the man’s influence outweighing his fledgling conscience.
“Do you understand what this government is demanding from you?” the senator asked firmly. “Do you understand the methods necessary in order for you to add to the overall equation by way of ‘addition by subtraction’?” Kimball sat with a straight face and said, “I do.” “You will conduct yourself accordingly to your position as secretively and as discreetly as possible. After you terminate Senator Cartwright and anyone else inside his estate, you will search for the files in his possession and destroy them. Once done, you will completely sanitize your trail so that it can never be traced to anyone within this government. Is that understood?” “It is.” The senator nodded as if pleased that he made his point. “What you’re doing, Kimball, is the right thing. You’re creating a means so that we, as politicians, can once again administer with neutrality. Be proud of what you’re about to do.” But Kimball felt ill at ease with himself, his face twisting as if pained. “Something wrong?” the senator asked him.
Then from Kimball, who caught himself and returned to his poker face, said, “No. Nothing. I’ll contact my unit and ready them. When do you require the mission to take place?” “Tonight, if possible.” “I’ll notify my team.” After proposing a smile, the Senator said, “You’re a good man, Kimball. And believe me, this country is better off with people like you.” Kimball got to his feet. Though his eyes flared a stark blue, the senator failed to see that they were also filled with doubt. “Will that be all, Senator?” he asked. The senator nodded. “No need to contact me once it’s over,” he told him. “I’m sure I’ll read all about it in the newspaper.” With stiff regimentation of movement, Kimball departed the office. A moment later, the senator said, “You get all that?” Senator Shore entered the room from a connected chamber and closed the door behind him. “Every word,” he said. “But I must tell you, Jeff, which concerns me greatly, is that the man was questioning the values of his mission. And a man who begins to question the values of a mission can suddenly grow a conscience and become a threat down the road. That’s what scares me.” Senator Rhames considered the same thing after Kimball questioned the reasons behind the operation, something no covert was supposed to do. Orders are given by the puppet master and the puppets perform as required. Strings are pulled and the marionette simply operates by the power it’s given. But Kimball Hayden surely proposed himself as one who had reluctances. “I know,” Rhames finally admitted. “All we can do is wait and see what happens.” “And if he performs according to his position?” Senator Rhames looked directly into the eyes of Senator Shore and said, “Then he performs according to his position . . . As an assassin.” “Now comes another question,” stated Senator Shore. “What if Kimball Hayden finally discovers that he has a conscience after all? A man who holds such a secret of another senator’s murder can become a threat to us down the road.” “I agree.” “And?” Senator Rhames released a soft sigh. “As I stated to you earlier, once the operation against Cartwright has concluded, Kimball Hayden will become such a liability that he’ll have to be absolved of his sins and be terminated. And just like that,” he stated to Shore, “our problems will go away.” Senator Shore, who added nothing to what he had just been told, took the vacant chair which was recently occupied by Kimball Hayden. The seat was still warm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Early Morning of August 2, 1990
President George H. W. Bush was awakened during the early morning hours with news that Saddam Hussein ventured onto Kuwaiti soil in an act of aggression. Listening to the events unfold over the phone’s receiver, President Bush nodded and asked questions. Since Kuwait was a major ally of the United States whose oil reserves were in jeopardy, George Herbert Walker Bush immediately called into council people of his military and intel staff. Over the next few days the president of the United States would make demands to Saddam Hussein by telling him to pull his troops from Kuwait, which went unheeded. Oil fields were usurped, and people were tortured, raped and killed. Threats of war against Hussein by Coalition Forces mounted, but it still wasn’t enough of a motivation for the dictator to vacate the country. It only stroked his ego by accepting the challenges. During these moments between diplomacy and war, American intel would formulate a strategy to assassinate Saddam Hussein with the belief that removing the head of the snake would cause the Iraqi army to fall back, once the head of Saddam Hussein was placed upon the symbolic wooden pike as warning. The question was: How to stage such an event? The clear-cut answer was to conscript an operative who could get close enough to assassinate Hussein. The problem seen by the principals, however, was the low percentage rate of success; therefore, they summarily dismissed the concept because the calculation of risk classified the operation as a ‘suicide mission.’ But Senator Rhames saw this as an advantage that would minimize his worries. Though President Bush decided to shelve the idea after it had been tabled, Senator Rhames saw this as a way to extinguish Kimball Hayden. He would play upon Kimball’s sense of duty and patriotism with puffing statements offering Kimball the chance to become the country’s savior, and to stop a war before it had a chance to begin. It was the perfect solution to a growing problem. What better way to rid one of his setbacks by having your enemy do it for you? In the eyes of Senator Rhames, there was no better answer than to send Kimball Hayden on a suicide mission for the good of his country.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Washington, D.C.
The Night of August 2nd
0104 Hours
The moment Iraq began its invasion of Kuwait, Kimball Hayden was assembling his team known by their handler as the Pieces of Eight, which was an elite kill squad that worked as part of a deep-state arm of the CIA. With Kimball manning the squad’s helm, there were seven others who were seasoned operatives who killed for the good of their country. First there was the glory of the United States, then God, and then themselves. They had killed scores in the name of their government by murdering those who were tagged as ‘true’ revolutionary subversives who railed against U.S. policies. Covert killings were always done by cloak-and-dagger because the assassinations could not be justified away due to First Amendment protections. But when they were informed that one of those subversives was a United States senator, eyebrows arched. How could a reigning senator pose a threat to members of Congress? Then Kimball spelled out the details in graphic prose to the members of his team without omitting one word that was verbalized to him by Senator Rhames. When Kimball finished outlining his mission goals and strategies, the members of his unit questioned nothing. They were simply the mechanical tools who were mobilized by the commands of their leaders. There was no room for remorse or contrition or measures of guilt. Every man on the team had been stripped of their moral conscience during training, that which made them human scrubbed away. In the end, each soldier had to be in the proper mindset of being good with their God after they killed their subject, be it man, woman or child. They were. Kimball had received the layout of the senator’s estate, which was in a twenty-four-carat neighborhood. Plans were summarized in pointed deta
il with each man having his specific duty to perform his task with precision. Incriminating files needed to be located and destroyed. And anyone inside the house needed to be terminated and the residence sanitized. No one was to be left behind so that an accusing finger could be directed towards the government’s wetwork team. As the team readied themselves and geared up, Kimball Hayden felt like an oddity. Unlike his brothers, he felt discomfort with the mission. In the back of his mind he began to question the ethicalness of their pending actions. Never question your superiors. Your superiors know what’s at stake. Your job is to perform to the best of your abilities according to the mandates. Question nobody . . . . . . Not even yourself. But for the first time, Kimball found himself fully standing at a crossroad. He did question his orders and the rituals that would soon follow: Search and destroy. It was becoming a mantra that was all too common. After gearing up, Kimball processed the situation and was able to change back into that cold and calculable assassin, who operated with a machine’s icy fortitude. Getting into a cube van for transport to the senator’s residence, the sky opened as lightning clashed and rain began to fall.
In silence, the team made their way towards the senator’s estate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Arlington, Virginia
0146 Hours
After parking the nondescript van about a third of a mile from the senator’s home, the kill squad kept the residence under surveillance. Each man carried a knife and a suppressed firearm, all considered to be light hardware, and operated in black-face and dark attire. The estate was luxurious testament to the senator’s long-term success. It was a two-story French-style country home with a brick turret and faux window shutters. In the front climbing along trellises were capes of roses that were in full bloom. And the landscaping was heavy with perfectly pruned bushes and maples that attractively decorated two acres of land. At such an early morning hour, as rain started to fall while lightning lit up the sky, only one light was on in the house which, according to the schematic, was the senator’s office. To see the lighted window posed no problem for the team since it was widely known that Senator Cartwright was an insomniac who could go on little sleep and still operate the next day with a fresh mind. The team, however, in preparation, had drawn up a blueprint to deal with this scenario. Kimball, who led his unit, checked his KABAR by placing his hand on the hilt, used the shadows as his ally, and approached the senator’s home with his kill team close.
* * *
Senator Joseph Cartwright, an ambitious man whose weighted arrogance was so often exhibited at the podium on the Senate floor, knew he was about to die at the hands of the very monsters he created. Inside the study of his residence, the senator closed the blinds against the inconstant flares from the evening’s lightning storm and moved as quickly as possible to his desk to bundle together some very special dossiers. There were members in Congress he knew could be manipulated, those he could easily command and operate. And then there were those whom he had gone too far with, members who had the same existing measure of command by presence alone. So, Cartwright misused his power of persuasion by coercing people like Senators Rhames and Shore and a few others to do his bidding, which they did. And because he had forced his issue upon elite members of Congress, he knew he had made a grave mistake in the wake of his dealings. He had allowed his ambition to outweigh his reasoning in order to fulfill his goal . . . . . with perhaps the cost being his life. When he approached Senators Rhames and Shore, he knew that the pressures brought on by the media was beginning to weigh on Rhames’s chances to become the next president of the United States. And with a sudden and clean sweep, those who were involved in manufacturing newsworthy narratives were forever removed under questionable, if not overly coincidental, measures. Senator Cartwright reviewed the killings of the journalists and editors and immediately saw the killing as the hallmark traits of the Pieces of Eight, a wetwork team he helped develop with Rhames and a few others to conduct covert
missions against foreign subversives. But the killings of those who worked at the Post was strictly an in-house operation, something that was clearly forbidden by the operational guidelines. Nevertheless, the senator considered, he had put himself in a precarious position where the team’s handler eventually sided with Rhames, after the senator proposed an argument that exigent circumstances were recommended to break the formulated rules of engagement, in order to right a ship against one man’s powers. Democracy would become jeopardized if Cartwright continued to rule with impunity by way of unethical means. What have I done? There was no one he could turn to for help, no one who would care to listen since he had ostracized himself in the eyes of many. His need for absolute power had painted him into a corner where no one was willing to lend a hand in aid. I did this to myself. He tried to contact the handler who managed the Pieces of Eight, the deep-arm manager of the elite kill squad whom he helped develop to counter terrorist regimes that were seen as threats to American sovereignty. Over time the agency started to take positions against U.S. citizens who were considered too subversive to the codes of the American way. Highly touted members of the Black and Hispanic communities suddenly died or disappeared. Voices who spoke too loudly about subjects that were too close to the hidden truth regarding secret agendas also disappeared. Was the Handler willing to terminate an esteemed senator, a federal officer? When he had spoken to the Handler, he received cold, monotone responses, with the language between them curt and clipped. That was when Senator Cartwright realized that he had overplayed his hand and was slated as a potential targeted killing. But I’m a United States senator. Still, he wanted to believe that his assassination was unlikely by the hands of the very team he helped create alongside Rhames and others through clandestine channels. He was the founding father of their genesis, a man who helped nurture the team along. But in the end, he had betrayed his own kind, which was a cardinal sin in the eyes of the Handler who had the unquestionable decision as to who lived or died despite the station one kept, whether it be political or otherwise. That was the message he received from the Handler when he questioned the man if he sanctioned the Post killings, only to receive standoffish answers. But when the Q and A turned from Cartwright by the Handler demanding answers on whether he had used his powers of coercion to adjust a vote on the Floor that undermined the rules of democracy, Cartwright felt a sour lump crawl into his throat, the man unable to answer. Since that was answer enough for the Handler, that was when the Handler stated softly in Latin: Traditores autem non est lux in profectum (Traitors have no place within the Light of Progress), which was a kiss-of-death proclamation that was often used in the business, a moment before he cut off his call with Cartwright, which left the senator holding the receiver in his hand, stunned. After he had placed the receiver gingerly onto its cradle, Senator Cartwright stared at his image that looked back at him from an ornamental mirror that was tacked to the wall. In his mind he had never looked so weak or vulnerable, the one-time king appearing like a weary pauper. But that was hours ago, the statement of Traditores autem non est lux in profectum still echoing through his mind with the Handler’s voice sounding as if he was speaking from the bottom of a well. Since then he had gathered all the documents regarding those he manipulated within Congress and those of the kill team he helped create. If nothing else, Senator Joseph Cartwright was planning to go down swinging. If necessary, he considered, I’ll bring everyone down with a swift and deadly blow that will make many regret their decision to see me gone . . . No one is truly innocent. After he bound the folders of every political principal whom he had stage managed, he set them aside for later storage in a secret compartment inside his desk. Then he examined the files of the kill team, the eight documented pieces of the creature he helped assemble into a single, unstoppable mass that would be at the beck and call of men who sat upon the highest political seats in D.C. In haste the senator bound the manila folders together with rubber bands, his arthritically challenged hands moving with surprising deft while hoping
that his death would serve as the beginning of the end of something that had gone horribly wrong, which would be the end of the clandestine wetwork unit. Closing his eyes and clenching his teeth as he leaned over the files, Senator Cartwright couldn’t help the pang of regret that tormented him for believing that he was untouchable, which allowed his conceit to carry him too far by pushing certain dignitaries too hard, too fast, or without giving any measurable thought of the terrifying powers they wielded. Now with his senatorial tenure about to come to a quick and deadly finish, the man struggled in hindsight and wished he had kept himself from challenging those whose scepters were just as lofty as his. Beyond the louvered windows of his estate, a staircase of lightning struck close by. The lights in the study winked, died, the house then succumbing to darkness as deep and vacuous as a celestial hole.