by Mike Ryan
“Was that us?” Myers said.
“What just happened?” Stephenson asked, getting the feeling that it wasn’t.
The analysts quickly went back to their computers, trying to figure out what was going on. Myers went over to a desk, checking in with the agents at the scene.
Still on the phone, Myers turned to his boss. “It wasn’t us.”
“Then who the hell was it?”
Myers pressed his ear back into the phone and started talking. “All three have checked in. None of them fired a shot.”
“Then who the hell is out there?!”
“What do you want them to do?”
“Just get them out of there,” Stephenson answered. “The entire area’s going to get blocked off soon. Just get them out.”
Myers relayed the instructions and then got off the phone to rejoin his boss at his side. “Well, even if it wasn’t us, at least somebody has interests that align with ours.”
“Yes, but I hate surprises, and I hate being left in the dark. I want to know who is out there.”
Porter had just gotten to the second floor on the stairwell when she thought she heard something unusual. She stopped and turned around, looking up to the top of the stairs. It sounded like somebody running quickly down the steps. And judging by how fast they seemed to be moving, boy, were they in a hurry. Porter didn’t think it could have been anyone after her, as there was no one in the hallway before or after breaking into that office. Unless it was somebody in another office who was looking down at the rally and saw what happened and was running down to tell everyone. Whatever it was, they were getting closer.
Porter remained glued in her spot as she waited for whoever it was to get to her. They were moving faster than she was, and she didn’t want to pick up her pace, so she decided to just let whoever it was pass her. After a few more seconds, she could tell the person was just about there, likely on the third floor now. Porter kept her eyes looking at the top of the stairs, where the steps turned, leading from the second to the third floor.
A man came flying down the steps, more looking down at the ground to make sure he didn’t stumble than out in front of him. But he noticed a figure standing there, and he came to a sudden halt, almost falling down as his heel slipped off one of the steps, though he grabbed the railing for support. The man immediately recognized Porter. Porter remembered seeing the man’s face back at Jeso’s apartment, but if she didn’t, she could tell that the man knew her. He had that look about him.
They were too close for Porter to run, so she had to face the man head on. The man reached for a gun from his belt and successfully removed it, pointing it at Porter. Porter quickly recognized what he was doing, and as soon as he pointed at her, she lunged at him, knocking the weapon away. They then started to attempt some punches, though each had blocked the other. As they battled on the platform steps, they each attempted to hit the other with some mixed martial arts, though once again, neither was getting the upper hand, as both had good defenses and couldn’t sneak a blow in.
The battle went on for a few minutes, with neither gaining an advantage, before Porter decided to change tactics. In the middle of fighting, she dropped to the ground, kicking out the man’s knees. Porter then drilled him with a punch right between his legs, causing him to scream out in agony as he held himself. Figuring the man was still a threat, Porter straddled him and started punching him in the face, alternating between her left and right hands. It wasn’t long after that until it became obvious that the man was clearly out of it and had been beaten.
With her hands and knuckles bloody, Porter finally realized the man was no longer responding. He was still breathing, so she knew she didn’t kill him, but the fight was over. She stood up, looked down at him, and went over to the gun she knocked out of his hands earlier, lying on one of the steps. Porter picked up the gun, then glanced over at the man, wondering if she should take him out permanently. She pointed the gun at him, deciding on whether she should pull the trigger. If she didn’t, she knew there was a good chance she’d see the man again at some point. They’d obviously keep coming for her. But she asked herself, is that really who and what she wanted to be? A killer? She’d just taken out three men. Did she really want to keep killing if it wasn’t necessary? Even if this was who she was before waking up in that motel room, and what she did for a living, she wasn’t sure it was who she wanted to be now.
Knowing she couldn’t stand there much longer, Porter took the magazine out of the gun, then dropped the unloaded weapon on the ground next to the man’s body. She then grabbed her bag and scampered down to the first floor, looking for the back exit. There seemed to be some excitement going on, as everybody was at the front windows and looking out. Someone must have told them what had happened. There were probably close to thirty people at the front windows, none of whom were paying any attention to the woman who was behind them.
Porter went down another hallway, past the receptionist’s desk, which led to the back door. Porter pushed the door open and stood just outside, looking around to see if anyone else was out there. Remembering the man she had just taken out in the stairwell, she knew the man probably wasn’t alone, and there were likely others out there somewhere. Porter took a deep breath, still looking all around, including at rooftops, trying to figure out whether they had her car marked. Maybe she’d get hit with a bullet just as she reached it, she thought. As she thought about it more, she came to the conclusion that she needed the car to get out of there. She didn’t think she’d get far on foot.
Porter took another deep breath, then raced to the car. She’d kept it unlocked, just in case she had to get out of there quickly. Relieved that nobody had fired at her, she started the car up, then drove down the back alley of the building. She wanted to move fast, but had to be careful about peeling out of there too quickly and drawing attention to herself. With the three men being killed, and the people that were always after her, a fast-moving car out of the area would surely draw everyone’s attention. After leaving the alley, Porter turned right, leading to a side street, driving in the opposite direction that the hotel was located. After being on the road for a few minutes, and continuously checking the mirror to see if anyone was racing toward her, she concluded that she’d made it. She’d gotten out of there in one piece, with no one following her. She’d escaped again.
17
Myers was rushing around the room, trying to figure out what was going on. He didn’t have many answers at this point. Stephenson had gone to a nearby analyst’s desk, instructing him on what he wanted him to do. It’d been about five minutes since the shootings, and the room was abuzz with questions, everyone trying to determine what had happened. After two of the agents had checked in to let the agency know they’d safely left the scene, Myers rushed over to Stephenson to inform him of the new developments.
“Sir, we have a problem.”
“I think we have several,” Stephenson replied.
“No, only two of our agents have checked in.”
“Which ones?”
“Twenty-six and thirty-eight.”
“So who’s missing?”
“Twenty-one,” Myers answered. “He was on the roof of the office building.”
“The other two have any idea about him?”
“They haven’t had contact with him either.”
“What are we getting on police activity?” Stephenson asked.
“Cops are all over the place. There was already a police presence there to begin with because of the rally, but it’s probably tripled by now. They’ve already started blocking off some of the roads.”
“Arrests?”
“Nothing so far.”
“So if they don’t have our man in custody, why has he gone silent?”
“Unless he’s in a tight spot right now and can’t risk breaking silence.”
“What would be so dire that he couldn’t even send a message?”
Myers shrugged and shook his head, not having
an answer. At least not a good one. “Lost his phone maybe?”
“If he lost his phone, he deserves to be captured.”
“What if he ran into the shooter?”
Stephenson looked at him like he thought he might have stumbled upon the answer. He then started talking to the entire room, not just Myers.
“OK, people, listen up, I wanna know the exact location those shots came from. Throw back the footage from the broadcast to the time of the shootings and let’s see if we can pinpoint it.”
Stephenson and Myers eagerly watched the screen as the footage was put up, starting only a few seconds from when the shots were fired. As soon as the first man started falling from getting shot, they froze the frame.
“There,” Stephenson said, pointing. “Came from the front, maybe a little on the side. Keep it rolling.”
They did the same thing with the next two men, freezing the video at the exact moment the men had gotten shot.
“Where are those shots coming from?” Stephenson asked.
“They’re all falling to their left,” Myers said. “That would indicate it’s coming from the office building, wouldn’t it?”
“I believe so.”
“From the angle of the office building, the force of the shot would make them fall in that direction. The restaurant is a head-on shot; they’d go straight back, or forward.”
After analyzing the video for a few more minutes, they were convinced that the shots had come from the office building, or somewhere nearby.
“The chip is still placing him at that building,” Myers said, observing the dot on the screen.
“Send one of the other agents back in. We need to know what’s going on and why he’s still in that building.”
Myers hadn’t even gotten to the desk yet when he was summoned by one of the analysts.
“Sir, twenty-one is checking in.”
Myers rushed over to the analyst’s desk and got on the phone, having a conversation that lasted a couple of minutes. Stephenson’s eyes kept glancing between Myers, trying to read his body language to decipher what was going on, and the screens on the wall, which had tons of different things going on. As Stephenson watched Myers, he could tell it was bad news. After Myers hung up the phone, he just stood there for a few seconds, looking up at the ceiling. Then Myers looked down at the floor, with his hand on hip. It looked like he was trying to figure something out. Either that or he was praying. Myers wiped his face as he walked back to his boss, sighing and mumbling to himself.
“What’s going on?” Stephenson asked.
“This is even a worse mess than we thought it was.”
“Why? What is it?”
“It’s Porter,” Myers said.
“What do you mean, it’s Porter? What about her?”
“I think she’s the shooter.”
Stephenson stared at his subordinate, looking stunned. “Why?”
“Twenty-one said he ran into her there.”
“What does he mean, he ran into her?”
“Apparently it goes like this,” Myers explained. “After he saw the targets go down, he immediately packed up and started getting out of there. He ran down the steps from the roof to get down to the main floor, and once he got to the second floor, he saw a woman standing there, looking like she was waiting for him.”
“Waiting for him?”
“Yeah, said she was just standing there. Maybe she was leaving and heard someone coming down the stairs and stopped to see who it was, I don’t know. But she was there. And it was Porter.”
Stephenson had no response. He folded his arms, then put his left hand over his mouth, playing with the edges of it as he thought of what it all meant.
“Why would Porter be there?” Myers asked.
“She was in the office building?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s where we think the shots came from?”
Myers knew what his boss was inferring, though he still had a hard time coming to grips with it. “Why would she take out our targets for us? Why would she bother after all that’s happened?”
“She was finishing her mission.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Our agents have been rigorously trained to finish every assignment they’re given. It’s ingrained in them.”
“But if she broke away from us, why would she even care?”
“Maybe we have something else at play here,” Stephenson said. “Maybe she’s having a psychological breakdown, unsure of what she’s doing from one day to the next. Was there anything in her profile that suggested anything of that nature?”
“No. Her last evaluation was three months ago. Completely clean. Not even one red flag.”
“Very strange.”
“So what do we do now?” Myers asked. “Do we have a rogue agent or do we not? I mean, she’s still doing jobs for us.”
“We still keep looking for her. Don’t forget she’s already taken out some of our own. What we need to understand now is that whatever she did today, even if we benefited from it… this wasn’t for us. She did this for herself. What the reasons are remains unclear, but make no mistake, she did this for her.”
“Why? How would this help her at all?”
“Those are the questions we still have to answer. But as long as she’s out there, we have to view her as a threat to this agency.”
“What if she did this as a sign she wants to come back in? Like she was making amends for everything so far?”
Stephenson rubbed his top lip. It was something he hadn’t considered thus far, but he supposed it was something they had to at least contemplate.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Stephenson said. “If that’s the case, she’ll try to get in touch with us again somehow. But until I hear her voice on that phone, begging to come back in, we have to continue to go on the assumption that she’s still on the lam. So until further notice, we’re still looking for her and taking her out at the first opportunity.”
When Porter arrived back at the hardware store a couple of hours later, Nails ran out of the store to greet her. He’d been watching out the window, nervously waiting for her to get back. He had worries that he would never see his car again. Not that the car was anything special, but he’d sort of grown attached to it over the years. With the original license plate in his hand, he ran over to the back bumper and changed the plates again.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Porter said, getting out of the car.
After Nails was done, he looked up at his client. “Oh, yeah, priorities, you know? If cops come zooming in here, gotta make sure everything’s up to snuff.”
“Yep.”
“So how’d everything work out for you?”
“Everything was fine.”
“Did you get what you were aiming for?”
“Don’t ask questions about things you don’t want the answers to,” Porter said. “Told you, the less you know, the better.”
“And you’re completely right about that. I don’t wanna know nothin’.”
“How you making out with my stuff?”
“Just about finished. Give me another twenty minutes and I’ll be done and you can be on your way.”
“Good.”
The two went inside and started walking toward the door that led to the back room. Porter looked around the store on the way back there, making an observation.
“Do you ever have any customers in here? I’ve noticed every time I’ve been here, you haven’t had a single other person in here.”
“Oh, yeah, I get people in here from time to time. You think if I was making a killing here, I’d be having to do all this black market shit?”
Porter looked at him dubiously. “Somehow, I get the feeling that you would.”
Nails laughed. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Once they entered the back room, where Nails did all his other work, he immediately went to a desk to finish up Porter’s documents. Porter w
alked around the room, looking at the pictures on the wall, along with other materials he had lying around the room. He had what seemed like hundreds of passports, visas, driver’s licenses, social security cards, personal IDs, just about every form of identification a person could think of.
“You got a lot of other business going on?”
Nails looked back to see what she was looking at, seeing her at a folding table with all his other stuff on it. “Oh, that? Nah, that’s just for me, to make sure I’m getting stuff as close to the originals as possible.”
“You mean these are real?”
“The genuine article.”
“How’d you get all these?”
“Remember what you told me about not asking questions?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it was good advice,” Nails said with a laugh. He then changed the subject. “So you didn’t mention it before, but should I keep on going with the passports for Jeso’s family?”
“No, it’s not necessary anymore.”
“You sure? Maybe they’d wanna get out of here.”
“The only reason they’d want to move is if Jeso was with them,” Porter said. “If they wanted to leave without him, they could’ve done it a long time ago.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”
“There’s no point to them changing names and leaving now. They can do it legally now if they want to.”
About twenty minutes went by, and right on schedule, Nails put his arms up, signifying he was victorious and finished. Porter noticed his gyrations and rushed over to him.
“All done?”
“Take a look,” Nails said, moving everything in front of her.
Porter looked at everything, picking it up and inspecting it closely. “You’re sure these will pass?”
“I will stake my reputation on it.”
“And how high is that?”
Nails laughed again, tapping his middle finger on the table. “For this type of work, it’s excellent. Believe me, you won’t have any problems with that. I guarantee it.”