The Suppressor

by Erik Carter

  She gave a Betty Boop pout, brought up her shoulders, stuck her ass out.

  Silence thought back to how easily she’d taken him down at Burton’s. There had been a few quick exchanges, and then he was on the floor, squeezed between her thighs in a move that had completely incapacitated him.

  No, he certainly hadn’t anticipated that from Christie Mosley.

  His arm gave out.

  Nakiri squeezed the stopwatch.

  Beep.

  She looked at the watch’s screen and couldn’t conceal a small, impressed grin. She’d given him almost no credit for his achievements through the weeks, so he was going to take her smile as a compliment, despite how quickly she removed it from her face.

  She flipped a page in the magazine, popped a bubble between her teeth. “Next arm.”

  That evening.

  Silence sat at the edge of his bed, wearing a pair of flannel pajamas and facing a Macintosh computer that was set up on a small table and connected to a phone jack. A diagonal strip of light from the crack in the doorway sliced over the bed and his legs.

  The Internet connection speed, Nakiri had told him, was 56K. Silence wasn’t much of a tech head, but he knew that 56K was blazing fast. The Watcher’s technological advances were staggering, ahead of the curve, already with a foot in the twenty-first century.

  He’d been staring off to the wall, lost in thought, and the computer’s flying toasters screensaver had kicked in. Refocusing, he moved the mouse, and the Netscape browser reappeared. It was open to the website he’d navigated to moments earlier: the Atlanta FBI Field Office. He was supposed to be working on a practice After Action Report—an AAR—but instead he’d logged onto the Internet to sate a personal hunger.

  Falcon had spoken in code the previous night: It would be just peachy if you figure out who I am, but don’t be a sad sack if you can’t.

  He’d put heavy emphasis on peachy and sad sack.

  And Silence had figured it out.

  Peachy: the Peach State, Georgia.

  Sad sack: SAC, Special Agent in Charge.

  He clicked the personnel page hyperlink. And immediately found Falcon.

  A vertical column of photos cut down the center of the page—headshots of men and women in dress clothes posed in front of a blue backdrop with an American flag to the side. At the top of the column was Silence’s Prefect.

  He clicked the image and opened Falcon’s individual page.

  On the left side of the screen was Falcon’s photo. He wore a sharp, conservative suit jacket with a bright red tie, sitting bolt straight. There was a slight grin under his mustache, but nothing like the flippant smirk to which Silence had become accustomed.

  Opposite of the photo was a list of biographical information.

  ANTHONY LASWELL

  SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE

  B.A. Philosophy, University of Iowa, 1962

  Juris Doctorate, Cornell University, 1965

  U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps, 1965-1969

  Vietnam Service Medal

  Special Agent, FBI

  Columbia Field Office - 1969–1970

  Indianapolis Field Office - 1970–1977

  Dallas Field Office - 1977–1988

  Special Agent in Charge, FBI

  Atlanta Field Office - 1988–present

  Silence smirked.

  A sharp voice made him jump.

  “Hey!”

  Nakiri looked through the gap in the door.

  “What’s with the grin, dummy? Lookin’ at pornography? Back to work!”

  She left.

  Two days later.

  They were in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by snow. As a California boy turned Florida boy, this was as close to a frozen tundra as Silence had ever been. The temperature was somewhere around the freezing point, and the fact that the snow wasn’t very thick—only about an inch of fresh powder that had fallen through the night—made things even more bleak, as everywhere mud brown showed through the white.

  He and Nakiri trudged across a desolate cornfield, empty but for a few rotten stalks. There were dark outlines of forests on the distant horizon. Another woods was much closer, only a few feet ahead of them. Their destination. They’d walked half an hour to get there.

  Nakiri wore a long, stylish coat, to her knees, cinched in tight, hugging her notable curves. A toboggan hat and gloves—matching—completed the look. Over her shoulder she’d slung a duffel bag, and propped against the other shoulder was a scoped Remington rifle, flawless and brand-new looking. She cupped its butt with a gloved hand.

  Silence carried nothing.

  And he wore only a pair of boxer briefs.

  He took another look at his quivering arms. They’d turned a grayish blue. Through his skin, a network of veins and muscular striations were clearly visible.

  He felt a disconcerting confluence of pain and numbness. If he kept moving forward steadily, kept an even pace and rhythmic motions, his body seemed almost detached from his senses, teasing him with a reprieve. But if he moved even a little in the wrong direction—say, by stepping on a clod of earth hidden in the snow or tripping over a frozen cornstalk—icy pain jolted through his entire body.

  His skin prickled, felt ready to crack. His nipples had constricted into tiny, taught dots on his quivering pecs. Even his eyelids and eyeballs were cold. He spasmed every few steps.

  The only saving grace was that his feet were so frozen and wet that he no longer sensed anything from them, not even the ice-pain. At least part of him wasn’t hurting, though the numbness itself was getting painful.

  They reached the edge of the forest, and as Silence glanced down, he saw briars and sticks and branches poking out of the thin layer of snow. He also saw his bare feet. Which had turned blue.

  Nakiri put her hand on his shoulder for a second, and the ice-pain surged through him, both warm and frigid. She quickly took her hand back and pointed to the briars he’d been studying.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Like I told you before, I’m not that mean.”

  She pointed again, farther way, to a small path in the woods.

  The trail was less cumbersome on his feet than the cornfield had been, but it wasn’t exactly like walking on a cotton rug.

  And walk they did.

  For probably another mile.

  Until the woods opened up into a crude shooting range—a cleared-out section with a row of wooden stands spaced evenly against a berm.

  Nakiri didn’t stop them until they were about twenty-five yards away from one of the stands.

  “Stay here,” she said.

  As she walked to the stand, she pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. After she’d affixed it to the wood, Silence saw that it was nothing more than a sheet of white printer paper with a rough black circle sketched in the center.

  “Firearms qualifications,” she said with a smile as she returned.

  Silence’s teeth rattled. “Haven’t shot once.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “All our firearms training has been bookwork. And this will be your one and only qualification. You can go train with guns on your own time, like the reading list I gave you. I’m here to harden your body, but more importantly to harden that dummy mind of yours. I keep telling you, Suppressor, the mind will be your most valuable weapon.”

  Silence was just about sick of her head games. He looked away from her, to the empty, skeletal branches above.

  “Where are we?” he said.

  He swallowed. His voice was even hoarser than usual, the frigidness amplifying the pain.

  “We don’t work for the government; we correct its mistakes,” she said. “But we do work within the government. We work where we can, when we can, and one of our Specialists was able to find an open day in the schedule of an undisclosed CIA training facility in rural Virginia.” She gestured broadly, dramatically at their surroundings. “Aren’t you a lucky boy?”

  Silence pulled his arms tighter around his chest and loo
ked at the rifle propped against her shoulder.

  “Shoot in cold.” He swallowed. “I get it.”

  Silence reached for the rifle, and Nakiri took a step back and laughed.

  “Well, thanks for setting up your next lesson so well, Suppressor. Because this,” she said, holding the Remington out on display, “is part of your training on preparedness and dealing with disappointment and lack of resources in the field.” She twisted the gun in her hands, looking it over. “I’m just carrying this around because it’s so darn pretty. Nice, isn’t it? Do you know what it is?”

  “Remington 700.”

  “It’s a Remington Model 700P, to be exact. A beautiful weapon. Too bad you won’t be shooting it today.”

  She reached into her pocket and retrieved something small and metal, something that fit in the palm of her hand.

  “This’ll be your firearm, dummy.”

  She held a tiny, rusty, derringer, something obscure, possibly even homemade. A single-shot, break action .22.

  Now Silence saw why the target was only twenty-five yards away—he’d be shooting a tiny, inaccurate, rusty, single-shot while his body shook violently.

  He took the small gun from her, cracked it open. It was empty.

  “Round?” he said.

  Nakiri smiled at him. “Sure, you can have all the rounds you want.”

  She reached back into her pocket and took out a Ziplock bag filled with shiny new .22 LR cartridges. She unzipped the bag then smiled and held it high, shook it, the rounds jingling inside.

  As Silence reached for the bag, she swung it upward. All of the rounds flew out, their brass casings twinkling in the muted gray light.

  They landed in the snow.

  And vanished.

  “Oh, and by the way,” Nakiri said, “you’ll be shooting from the prone position. Might as well get down there and find your first round.”

  Now Silence fully understood.

  This was going to be even worse than he thought.

  As he got on his knees and lowered himself to the ground, he thought that he couldn’t possibly feel any more pain in his numbed body.

  He was wrong.

  The cold hit his chest and stomach like a blast, and he shuddered as it stole his breath. His wet fingers trembled as he saw a tiny glisten of brass in front of him, peaking out of the snow beside a twig.

  He plunged his pink-blue hand into the snow, pinched the cartridge between two half-dead fingers. His hand shook harder as he brought the round into the snapped-open derringer, inserted it, and snapped the tiny gun back together.

  Nakiri propped the Remington against her shoulder, then shoved her other gloved hand into her pocket and used it to pull her formfitting coat in even tighter. She shivered.

  “Begin,” she said.

  The target had five holes in it, none in the black center. Silence’s hands had become so numb now that he couldn’t feel the cartridges nor the gun, couldn’t feel any of it as the derringer barked out another small crack and left another hole in the paper.

  Two inches away from the black circle.

  He’d spotted another cartridge a few moments ago, this one a foot away from his shoulder. It was the last one of which he knew the location. He would have to start hunting for them soon.

  He reached into the snow, squeezed his hand numbly around where he knew it to be, and retrieved it, then inserted it into the derringer and snapped the gun back together. His arms shook, and for a moment, he wanted to let the desperation roll over him, to fuse with the cold and consume him, swallowing him into the muddy forest floor.

  But then he thought of C.C.

  She would have a way to get past this obstacle. She always knew the right ways to break through issues of the mind.

  C.C. would tell him to breathe. From the stomach. Diaphragmatic breathing. She would say that he should visualize heat, that he should use his mind to substitute heat for the cold.

  He took a deep breath. Held it. Closed his eyes.

  Nakiri behind him: “What are you stalling for, Suppressor? Hurry your ass up.”

  He replaced her voice with C.C.’s.

  Feel the moment, love. Don’t reject it. Embrace it.

  He opened his eyes. Exhaled. And squeezed the trigger.

  Crack!

  A small hole appeared in the black part of the target.

  Beep.

  Nakiri pulled her hand from her pocket. Resting in her glove was the digital stopwatch that Silence hadn’t known she’d brought with her. Her eyebrows raised as she looked at the time.

  “Eleven minutes. And only seven rounds.” She looked at the target, shoved the stopwatch back in her pocket, turned away from him. “Those are both records.”

  She grinned. Then scowled.

  “One good shot doesn’t mean shit, dummy.”

  She shrugged the duffel bag off her shoulder and threw it in the snow beside him. And when he just stared back at her, she gave him a little motion with her chin that said, Open it.

  Silence brought his dead fingers to the bag and unzipped it.

  A large bath towel. Jeans. Multiple shirts. Boots. Multiple pairs of socks. Fresh underwear. A jacket.

  He grabbed the towel and dried off, instantly feeling warmer. Then the jeans. With his hands and arms and legs as lifeless as they were, it took nearly as long to get dressed as it had to hit the target. But when he was done, he was warmer, like he’d climbed into a sauna.

  Nakiri stepped up to him.

  “Now … hit me.”

  Silence stared at her.

  More of her mind games. He felt his nostrils flare.

  Of all the shit she’d put him through, he hated this the most.

  “Still can’t hit a woman. You have to be able to do this. Didn’t you ever apprehend women as a cop?”

  “Of course.” He swallowed. “Never punched one.”

  “Why’s that? Because we’re so pretty and sweet?” She primly placed a hand under her chin, looked up and to the side, batted her eyelashes. “Let me tell you, Suppressor, you’re going to face a lot of awful women in this job. And you’ll have to throw a few punches.”

  She gave him a dark look.

  “I shouldn’t pass you. You don’t have it, Silence Jones. You weak-minded idiot. Weak, weak, weak. Hell, I should have failed you long ago. You stole my assignment, my ticket out of this life. I should go to Falcon right now and tell him what a worthless sack of shit you are.”

  Her chest rose. An exhale whistled out of her nose, puffing a cloud of vapor in the frigid air. She narrowed her eyes.

  “I’ve put you through some real hell. Any man in your position, no matter how chivalrous, would knock my lights out. There’s something else holding you back. And I know what it is.”

  She stepped closer. A dark smile played on the corners of her mouth. Her eyelids lowered farther, and her gaze deepened. Bedroom eyes.

  “This goes back to our first day of training. When I touched you. You have a connection with me now.”

  She put her hand on his chest, and he brushed it away roughly.

  Another sultry look from her.

  “That’s it. We have a bond, don’t we, Silence? That’s why you won’t strike me. And maybe the bond is giving you conflicting thoughts about your girlfriend.”

  “Fiancée.”

  Nakiri shrugged. “I never saw a ring on her finger. Whatever you want to call her, the thought of Cecilia is sullied now, isn’t it? Because not only did I play with your ding-dong, but I’ve been with you every step of the way during the most difficult time in your life. You’re closer to me than you ever were to her, whether you like it or not.”

  She put her hand on his crotch, and he smacked it away again, harder than before, strong enough to make a slap sound that echoed through the trees.

  “Cecilia told me her secret,” Nakiri said. “She and Christie Mosley didn’t have too many moments together, but for some reason, your fiancée decided to open up to me one night. A little girl time
. She told me she was saving herself for when you two got married. Not your typical born-again virgin, was she? Aren’t they usually the church-going types? Which got me to wondering—maybe it wasn’t even by choice. Maybe you were too dickless to do anything with her.”

  She grinned. Then leaned closer, getting on her tiptoes, placing her lips right beside his neck, so close that he felt the heat of her breath on his frozen skin.

  “And maybe you’re worried that since you enjoyed how I touched you, then maybe, just maybe, she enjoyed it. Cecilia. I mean, I wasn’t there, but I gotta imagine that those rough-and-tumble guys didn’t just slap her around. You watched the video. Tell me, did they touch her? You know, touch her. Did they rub their big, strong hands all over that tight little born-again body? Oh, yeah, baby. That little gray dress she wore that night.”

  She took a step back and smiled up at him, eyes twinkling darker.

  “Maybe she even liked being slapped around. The rough stuff. God knows you weren’t man enough to give it to her. All those tough guys feeling her up. Maybe her dying moments were spent living out the sexual fantasies you were never gonna fulfill.”

  She smiled wickedly.

  “Maybe she just loooooved it.”

  Silence felt something in his numbed body, little tingling sensations in his face. Quivering fury.

  He slugged her.

  Right to the eye socket.

  She flew back, head snapping behind her, hair flailing, landing on her back in the snow.

  Silence instantly knelt, reached out for her.

  She leaned up, groaning, and planted her hands on either side of her. She looked at his outstretched hand, slapped it away.

  One of her eyes was pinched shut, the other scowling.

  Then she grinned.

  “Training complete,” she said.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Training complete.

  Nakiri’s words rolled through Silence’s mind as he took another sip of the Heineken and leaned farther back in the metal folding chair, his long legs draped in front of him, feet resting inches from the shiny, curved plastic wall of the pod.