Double Crossfire

by Anthony J. Tata

  “Oh my God,” she muttered.

  She stood and walked into the front room of the house and pressed the Band-Aid behind her ear, which was actually a miniaturized transmitter and receiver developed by Nuvotronics in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina.

  After a few seconds of static, Jake’s voice emanated through her mastoid bone into her ear canal. The microradio was mostly secure, operating on a fully encrypted signal within a discreet bandwidth of the radio spectrum. Ever since Bulgarian hackers had cracked the Zebra communications system used by Mahegan and his team, General Savage and the JSOC communications engineers had experimented with a variety of technologies.

  “Go,” Mahegan said.

  “You need to move out now. You, me, Savage, and the team are all on Jamie’s list.”

  “Roger. Thought we had a deal with her. Any other names?”

  “Need to check that. Biagatti’s not on it,” Cassie said.

  “Okay. If you see or hear the name Syd Wise, let me know.”

  “He’s bad, I think.”

  “Understand,” Mahegan said. “Status?”

  “On the go. It’s tight.”

  “Rally point?”

  “Will get there eventually,” she said. “Wait, one more thing.”

  “Send it.”

  “Jamie talked about setting up a Committee of Public Safety. Any clues?”

  After a pause, Mahegan said, “Yes. They were the henchmen during the French Revolution who quelled rebellion. They had absolute power and authority and were savage.”

  “Makes sense. She’ll probably go after all Smart supporters with martial law. She’s double crossing any deal you’ve got in place with her.”

  “No politics, Cass, just tactics. Be safe.”

  “You too.”

  She pressed the tab in the center of the Band-Aid and the link evaporated.

  “Who you talking to?” Jermaine was standing in the doorway, eyes wide.

  Cassie rubbed her left arm, needing Zara’s boost. She grimaced, hating herself for the loss of control, but it had been a necessary part of The Plan. She was all in, subjecting herself to Zara’s abuses. Secretly watching the injections on the other women had bothered her most. The pop, pop, pop sounds of the Valley Trauma Center firing range echoed in her memory. One by one, the women were marched to the range, the gym, the weight room. They were trained to defend and attack, as much as to capture and kill. Their physical conditioning was superb, as she had seen at the marina. Was Zara controlling them? It couldn’t be Jamie. She didn’t have the skill sets. But Zara was a different story. Zara had come to her room at the VTC three times a day, hooked up the meds, wired her system. When she felt herself at the tipping point, near completely losing control, she fled.

  The mission had required full immersion. The only way her legend would work was if she played the role 100 percent. All of the best deceptions were built around a sliver of the truth. Cassie did have a traumatic brain injury. She did struggle with post-traumatic stress. She did require extensive rehab and recuperation. Even the memory loss was real, she realized as she struggled to conjure the memory of Jamie’s visit to her in Walter Reed Hospital and her gentle nudge for a transfer.

  “Help me,” she says to Jamie, who is standing above her.

  “How, dear?”

  “There’s a better place.”

  “What place?”

  “The Trauma Center in the Valley, I think.”

  “Who told you about this place?”

  “I’m not sure. People talk.”

  “I’ll check into it.”

  With that, Cassie’s half-lidded eyes close. She feels her mind swoon, part act, part real. Through the thin sliver of daylight between her eyelids, she sees Zara Perro and remembers the list Jake gave her on his daily visit. The “visits” have become planning sessions. Mahegan’s briefings are alarming.

  “The only way to get inside the decision cycle of the GRF . . . the fever pitch of the Resistance is boiling over . . . investigations of the administration are still not yielding what they had hoped for . . . moving from outrage to planning to execution . . .”

  “Cassie!”

  Jermaine had been trying to get her attention, but she had been deep in the hole of a memory that had chosen to present itself.

  “Yes? What is it?” She struggled to remember where she was. The DHT-and-Flakka cocktail had rewired her system to expect the elixir at specific times. Fighting through the void was, she imagined, like going cold turkey from heroin or opioids.

  “We’ve got to go! There’s people outside with guns!” Jermaine whispered with excitement and fear. “This way.”

  He led her through a back room, stepping through open studs that led to another home in the series of row houses. They seesawed through the complex like this, Jermaine leading and reaching back for her hand, until they slipped into a tunnel. Jermaine closed the door and said, “It smells real bad down here, but it’s how we can get to another part of town. They thought about doing a Metro train or something down here, but it didn’t go nowhere.”

  Cassie nodded, wondering how the Resistance forces had so quickly pinged her location. The Band-Aid communications had not been penetrated, she was certain. The galloping footsteps above prevented her from inspecting Jermaine’s phone, but she had an idea that maybe he had communicated with someone. Any text from this area mentioning a woman on the run would easily reveal her position, or at least provide a clue as to her whereabouts. From that point, she would have been an easy find for the FBI’s secret program operatives from the Valley Trauma Center.

  “You better wait until it’s dark out, if you got someone chasing you. I can walk out and nobody will pay me any mind. Just another black kid skipping school. Then I can come back and help you,” Jermaine said.

  “Why? Why would you do that? You don’t know me,” Cassie said.

  “You talked to me more in the last hour than any of my teachers have all year. You at least showed interest in what I’m doing,” Jermaine said.

  Cassie nodded, took a deep breath, and sighed. “I understand, but I can’t involve you in this. If it is what I think it is, these people will kill you, Jermaine, if they think you know anything about me. They’ll make it look like a gang shooting, if that.”

  “This is my turf,” Jermaine said. He puffed his chest confidently. That’s all Cassie needed was a nine-year-old kid helping her accomplish her mission. Is this what it’s come down to?

  Jermaine turned and ran through a door that led to a stairwell filled with debris. Ten minutes later, he returned, breathing heavily, his backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “Four women walking the streets. White women, like you,” he said.

  Cassie nodded. “Did they see you?”

  “Like I said, this is my hood, not theirs.”

  “Don’t underestimate them,” Cassie said. There was movement in her periphery. She instinctively reached for Jermaine and her pistol. Protect the boy, kill the attackers.

  “That’s right,” a voice called out.

  She pulled Jermaine behind her and snapped off two rounds at the figure moving through the doorway. The woman coming down the steps fell back, but not before firing her pistol. The bullet whizzed past her and pocked through the moldy drywall behind her. Tugging Jermaine with her, she moved toward the entrance, eyes focused on the fallen attacker. The woman’s face was cocked sideways in the daylight spilling through the stairwell.

  One down, three to go.

  Hard breaths pumped from her lungs. She was subconsciously reaching for the juice. Images of needles, Zara, Jamie, and Jake, all swam through her mind, confusing her. She shook her head, clearing the confusion away.

  “Is there another way out?” Cassie whispered.

  Jermaine was staring at the dead woman, speechless.

  “Jermaine!”

  “Yes. Yes. Follow me.” He snapped from his trance and tugged at Cassie. They ran to the far wall beyond the stairwell.


  “This is a dead end,” Cassie said. There was a solid wall of dirt, a stalled construction project.

  Jermaine lifted a gray tarp that matched the excavated wall of dirt. On all fours, he scurried through a small tunnel. Cassie followed and found herself having to low-crawl through the muck. There were voices in the room they had just departed.

  “Where’d they go?” a woman asked.

  “Had to be that way,” another said.

  Footsteps pattered into the distance. Running. Athletes. Trained shooters. Killers. Jermaine crawled into the darkness as Cassie followed.

  Had Zara set loose these assassins on her?

  CHAPTER 16

  ZARA PERRO SAT IN HER BLUE VELVET ERGONOMIC CHAIR, STARING AT the Potomac River, thinking about the mayhem they had unleashed on the country.

  “Thanks for dumping those bodies,” Zara said to Special Agent Syd Wise who was sitting across from her.

  “It’s what cargo elevators are made for,” he replied.

  Zara chuckled. “Not sure how those guys found us.”

  “It’s crazy right now. It’s wide open rebellion within the government. We were right to use convicts for this thing, you know.”

  “Well, it was the only way to really get their commitment. Some people pretend to be all in on our agenda, but they’re just Twitter warriors, talking tough. If you can’t kill someone, then what good are you? If your government tells you to fight, it’s a war. If you choose to fight, it’s a rebellion. This is a rebellion against tyranny.”

  “About right,” Wise replied. “Anyway, so it worked?”

  He was sitting on the low-slung gray sofa, drinking a beer. In front of him was a MacBook with blue dots on it, each one representing one of the Artemis team members. He and Zara had handpicked convicts from around the country to be at the Valley Trauma Center and then for ultimate selection onto the Artemis team. The trade was that Wise had the records of each of the women expunged. Once they had the team assembled, Wise had thought Artemis was a clever spin-off of Greek mythology, Artemis being the goddess of the hunt and twin sister of Apollo. NASA had the Artemis Project in the early 1990s, and Wise thought that if anyone intercepted their communications, they perhaps would think it was related to the NASA effort.

  “It’s working is a better way to put it,” Zara said. “We just had sex and napped for thirty minutes, two things I know I needed.”

  “I’m always up for nailing you,” Wise said.

  “You say the sweetest things,” Zara mocked.

  “You’ve never appeared to me as someone who appreciates sweet things,” Wise said. “I can lie, if you want me to?”

  “About me or something else?” Zara pressed.

  “Anything you wish,” he replied.

  “Why don’t we focus on the facts in front of us,” Zara said. She stood and moved next to him on the sofa. Leaning forward, she studied the array of images of Artemis assassins on his screen. Like a chessboard, the dead ones were square facial pictures with a red X through them. She saw the four from the action at the CIA director’s home. Another two from the ambush effort that Mahegan had managed to detect and destroy. Then the six from the pier at the Daingerfield Island marina. Her force was down to fourteen.

  “Another one,” Wise said.

  In Southeast DC, one of the chips went cold. If the chip detected a five-degree drop in body temperature, it registered a dead agent.

  “Sandy McLemore,” Zara said. “She was a good one.”

  “Not the best with a pistol, but an excellent athlete. Tennessee Prison for Women. Superb intramural program there,” Wise said. Then he pointed at the screen and said, “There are three more close by. Must be the direction Cassie ran.”

  “They’ve all been on their own now for nearly forty-eight hours,” she said. “You deployed each with a satchel of medication, correct?”

  “The exact satchels you packed,” Wise said. “This was always the tenuous part of the plan. Will they self-medicate?”

  “We did enough testing before we deployed them. Of course, each one is different, but most got to the point where they relied upon medication enough.”

  “They have a two-day supply. The ones who are not killed, we will have to dispose of. You know that, right?”

  “Yes. We discussed this,” Zara said.

  Looking at the screen, Wise said, “Those three are moving toward the military base, Bolling Air Force Base.”

  “DIA headquarters?”

  “If they’ve got Cassie under pursuit, she’s not getting in there.”

  “And there’s a Catholic School across the street. She’s got morals. Doubt she’ll put at risk any teachers or staff that might still be there. We have to trap her.”

  “Two Metro stations. Anacostia and Congress Heights,” Wise said.

  “I’ve got another team headed there now. Two on each stop. She’d be crazy to get on a Metro. Too many cameras in the stations,” Zara said. She leaned over and typed in some commands until a split screen showed the two Metro stop entrances. The signature lit M shone brightly in both displays. Night was falling. The escalators churned upward and downward, occasionally spilling passengers out and taking them in. Nothing remarkable was happening.

  Wise pointed out of the window to the southeast, along the channel. “All of that is right there. Isn’t it odd that we’re watching it unfold digitally and it’s all a mile or two away as the crow flies?”

  “I’m typing in some algorithms that will project where she will most likely turn up,” Zara said. “It doesn’t strike me either way. I just want the job done so we can get on with it.”

  “Me too,” Wise said.

  She picked up the remote and said, “Might as well check in on the chaos.”

  CNN’s Anderson Cooper was interviewing their political analyst, who was commenting.

  “Anderson, I think what we are witnessing here is ‘hybrid warfare. ’ Whether these attacks are in support or opposed to a particular person, we’ve seen a deterioration of our institutions under the current administration to the point that this is not unexpected. Protest has migrated to revolution in the form of armed conflict.”

  Cooper responded, “But don’t you think this is a bit extreme?”

  “Look, conservatives took pride in the Barry Goldwater saying ‘Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.’ I think what we’re seeing here is extremism, for sure, but is it wrongheaded if it is in defense of liberty and pursuit of justice?”

  “I guess my question would be, who gets to define that? We have laws that make murder a crime. Assassinating the president, if that’s what happened, and it appears that is the case, is tantamount to treason. U.S. Code makes it illegal to simply threaten to harm the president, much less kill him or her.”

  “I think again we are talking about the deterioration of our norms and institutions to the point where even U.S. Code may not apply. It will really be up to the Jamie Carter administration.”

  Cooper braced. “The Carter Administration. I haven’t really heard that phrase in three years since she lost the election. What do you think a Carter administration will do in this time of utter national crisis?”

  “Carter will come in and quickly take the mantle. She had an excellent, proper swearing-in ceremony. It was respectful and reminded me of Johnson being sworn in on the airplane. It happened as swiftly as possible and in an appropriate—”

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “But I have to stop you there. We’ve got breaking news that the FBI is claiming that Senator, I guess now President, Jamie Carter is on a supposed ‘hit list.’ So the killing may not be intended to stop with the Speaker. This is a truly startling development. Next in line, of course, would be the secretary of state, General Lloyd Kinnear, who could not be reached for comment. He is on an airplane returning from Southeast Asia. The secretary of state is the fourth in line of succession for the presidency. Many of us remember the Alexa
nder Haig statement ‘I’m in charge,’ when President Reagan was shot. Of course, he wasn’t, but could we be looking at something inspired by that type of sentiment from a secretary with a similar background? Secretary Kinnear is a retired four star general, who certainly has gravitas and command presence. There have been, though, public squabbles between the president and General Kinnear. Also, importantly, Captain Cassie Bagwell and General Kinnear served together at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. So the plot thickens, as they say.”

  “Well done,” Zara said.

  “I try.” Wise grinned.

  She supposed that feeding the false narrative to his CNN contact had been easy enough.

  Cooper continued with another breaking news banner flashing beneath him. “And as if there isn’t enough information to sort through, there’s this. A lead suspect in the case has been leaked to CNN. Her name is Cassie Bagwell. She is a captain in the U.S. Army and a Ranger who was recently wounded in combat in Iran. She had been recovering at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda and then at the Valley Trauma Center in Virginia. Two days ago, she apparently fled from the Valley Trauma Center, and now her DNA or fingerprints have been found at three different crime scenes, including the murder of Senator Hite. We don’t have any details on how the three highest-elected officials were assassinated, other than to say that the White House doctor has confirmed the deaths of the president and vice president, and that the FBI has confirmed the death of the Speaker. Of course, Senator Hite was found dead three months ago in his North Carolina beach house. That investigation has picked up in light of recent developments, we are told by a North Carolina Special Bureau of Investigation spokesperson. Putting all of this together, we are certainly in the middle of a national crisis. Our democracy is reeling. Could it be at the hands of a disgruntled veteran?”

  A CNN military analyst came on the television, saying, “This is troublesome news, Anderson. Captain Bagwell was the first female graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School, so she definitely has the skill sets to kill people. A connection that many of your viewers have not made is that Captain Bagwell’s father was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he and his wife, Bagwell’s mother, were slaughtered in a cage by Syrian terrorists in the Blue Ridge Mountains a year ago. So not only does this veteran have post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, but she also has cause to blame the institutions of government for failing to stop terrorists from killing her parents.”