by Rawlin Cash
It took every ounce of self-control Hunter had to follow Hale. There was an aircraft on the tarmac and Hale led him up the ramp. The hold had been converted into a testing facility, something like a doctor’s lab, and over the next eight hours, Hunter was subjected to psychological and stress tests while the plane circled over international waters in the Indian Ocean.
There were doctors, psychologists, CIA guys, and a government lawyer on board.
At one point the lawyer asked him to sign a document waiving his constitutional rights and permitting the erasure of his civil records.
“Read it,” Hale said.
“What’s the point?”
“So that you know what you’re getting into.”
“I’m only here because I was ordered by my battalion commander.”
“This one’s different. Only sign it if you agree.”
Hunter read it, every word, and then held it up. “Why would anyone in their right mind sign this? It will make me disappear.”
“Because we can’t go any further unless you agree to it.”
Hunter was stubborn. He didn’t like to be manipulated, but the thought of getting this far into something and then pulling the plug went against his nature.
He signed the document and a moment later one of the doctor’s put a plastic gun against his calf muscle and pulled the trigger.
“What was that?”
“An electronic device.”
“This is all experimental shit, isn’t it?” Hunter said.
“It’s all been tested.”
“It’s going to fuck me up.”
“It will make you more valuable to the government.”
“Until it gives me cancer.”
One of the CIA stooges, a stupid guy built like a tank, laughed.
Hunter looked at him. “You been through this?”
The man shook his head. “No one’s been through it.”
“Who was it tested on then?”
“Monkeys,” the man said and laughed again.
The doctor shook his head. He was holding a tablet and tapped it.
Hunter felt something in his calf. It was faint, but it was there. It felt like a bug crawling under his skin. And instantly there was a reaction, like the flow of adrenaline when a threat approaches, or the spine tingle during a horror movie.
“What is that?”
A psychologist stepped forward and took a seat opposite Hunter.
“What was in that thing?” Hunter said, but he was already getting dizzy.
He rubbed his eyes.
The psychologist said, “What can you tell me about your first sexual experience?”
“What?” Hunter said. His vision was going blurry.
“Why did your father kill himself?”
Hunter tried to stand up but he couldn’t.
“Your grandfather liked you, didn’t he? He was real friendly. Real friendly.”
Antonia shook his arm. “Hunter?” she said. “Hunter.”
He’d fallen asleep. The world flooded back. The restaurant. The square. The girl.
He was safe.
“Pesadillas,” Antonia said.
Nightmares.
Hunter’s coffee was cold. He rubbed his forehead. It was clammy with sweat.
“Lo siento,” he said.
The child had finished her ice cream. The sun was setting. It was time to leave. He reached into his pocket for his wallet and went into the restaurant.
The soccer game was still on the television but the broadcast was suddenly interrupted by a newscaster. Hunter looked up at the screen. A man was sitting behind a desk. It was the set of the local station’s newsroom. The newscaster was clearly flustered.
“El presidente de los Estados Unidos está muerto,” he said.
The president was dead.
Thirteen
Jeff Hale watched Fawn’s interrogation from the observation room and when it was finished he went to his office and poured himself a scotch. The interrogation was thorough, intense at times, but she’d handled it well. He sat at his desk and when the knock came, he knew it was her.
“They really went for it,” she said.
“Ninety minutes, to the dot.”
“How’d I do?”
“As well as anyone could.”
“Will it be enough?”
“Depends on how big of a shit storm this becomes.”
“A lot of people will be happy the president’s killer is dead,” she said.
“And some of them will use it as an excuse to get to us.”
She nodded. “Anyway, in the meantime, we do our job, right?”
“Yes.”
“They didn’t recover that drone?”
He looked at her. It was the one thing from her interrogation that didn’t match up with the written record.
“No they didn’t.”
She nodded. “I’m not on suspension am I?”
“No. That would be exactly the signal I don’t want to send.”
Fawn took a deep breath.
“You know what I’m going to say next, don’t you?”
“Yes I do.”
“And you’re going to resist it.”
“Yes I am.”
She shook her head.
He knew she’d get right to this, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to explain his position to her.
“We need to call in Hunter.”
He sighed. He picked up the scotch and finished it.
“Can I offer you one?”
She nodded. He got up and poured two doubles.
“This is a single malt,” he said.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I was just saying.”
“I don’t care about malt.”
He took a sip. It was good scotch. An eighteen year old Macallan. She should have appreciated it. She downed it like it was a three dollar Jägermeister. He took her glass and poured her another. She’d earned it.
“There’s no one better qualified,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk about Hunter.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.”
She laughed.
He looked at her. She was another one of his errant children. She’d only been an analyst when he noticed her. Sometimes he felt like one of those spiders who gets devoured by its own young.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” she said.
“You know what happened.”
She nodded. It was basically true. She didn’t know the details, but the general contours were always the same. Hale found people with a very specific skill set. People who were born to hunt down and kill America’s enemies. He then used them to do just that. Sooner or later, something went wrong. Then he had them killed before they came after him.
Except with Hunter, that was not what happened.
With Hunter, he’d refrained from calling in the hit. He should have done it. He knew that. An agent like that was a loose end he couldn’t afford to ignore. Sooner or later, they came back to eat the spider that birthed them.
Fawn said, “If you’re afraid of him, why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?”
Hale looked out the window. Acre after acre of parking lot.
“I knew I’d need him one day.”
“And today is not that day?”
“I don’t think it is.”
“You’re scared. You’re scared shitless. I know you, Hale.”
“I’m not scared. Why would I be?”
“Because you’ve done something.”
“I’ve done a lot of things.”
“You sly bastard. You’ve done something bad and now you’re afraid to call in the man we need.”
He shook his head.
He knew it was only a matter of time. The memory inhibitors were far from perfect. Sooner or later, Hunter would remember everything, and when he did, he would come for him.
And there was nothing he could d
o about it.
If a man like that comes for you, you’re already dead.
The only way to ward it off would be to kill Hunter first, and that was something Hale had never been willing to do. It wasn’t because he’d grown soft. It was because Hunter was still loyal to him. He was still an asset.
Hunter was the reason Hale was head of the CIA. And he would prove himself useful again. Hale knew it.
At the end of the day, Hale knew he was scared. He had no grand illusions of his place in the world. He was surrounded in hostile territory, alone, with the enemy closing in. Hunter was his last grenade. He was a damaged grenade, a grenade with a bum fuse that could blow up in his face at any moment, but a bum grenade was still preferable to having nothing when the enemy was this close.
Fourteen
Fawn left Langley after midnight and for the first time the reality of what had happened hit her.
Nothing would ever be the same.
The president was dead.
She’d killed the suspected shooter.
She’d also ordered the first domestic airstrike in the nation’s history.
The entire intelligence community would be on her back. Even Hale would turn on her if it became expedient. She knew the game. She’d signed up for it.
Whatever her life had been, whatever the trajectory it had been on, that was over.
Hale had always said those secret powers would come back to haunt them. Having an executive order locked away in a file was one thing. Actually using it in broad daylight was something else.
Technically, Fawn’s action had been correct. The power had been granted for precisely that type of situation.
“The CIA may use any available military asset to respond to an attack or threat, foreign or domestic, on the United States leadership structure.”
She had seconds to make the call. The president was dying. The suspect was about to disappear forever.
Fuck them. If she’d acted any differently she’d already be in a cell.
As she left the building, she spotted the two agents who’d been assigned to monitor her during the investigation. She didn’t know them personally, they were from some obscure corner of the agency that monitored internal affairs, but she felt she had a pretty good read on them.
They were clean-cut, fresh-faced, wholesome guys. The type of men people pictured when they thought of a federal agency. The type who obeyed the rules and stayed out of trouble.
She nodded at them.
Might as well keep things civil, she thought.
She’d called a cab from upstairs and it was waiting for her.
“Take me to U Street,” she said.
After the day she’d had, there was only one thing on her mind.
The cab let her off outside a bar on U Street and she went in. The bartender was a massive guy with tattoos on his arms and neck. He had a beard. Jazz was playing.
“Scotch,” she said. “Straight up.” She thought of Hale and added, “Single malt.”
The bartender held up a bottle. She didn’t know what it was but she nodded. He poured her the shot and she knocked it back and asked for another.
“You want a beer with that?” he said.
She nodded. Her tail, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, walked in and stood by the door. They looked out of place in their suits and haircuts.
She beckoned them over.
“A couple of beers for my friends here,” she said to the bartender.
“No thank you,” Tweedledee said.
Fawn knocked back her second shot.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Relax. We’ve had a hell of a day.”
“We’ll have two club sodas,” the agent said to the bartender.
The bar wasn’t busy but it wasn’t dead. It was a dingy place. An old set of twinkling Christmas lights and a polished brass rail were its main decorative flair.
“Aren’t you at least going to introduce yourselves?” Fawn said.
There was no reason she couldn’t talk to them. She was above them in rank and she hadn’t done anything wrong. She was being monitored purely as a precaution. It wasn’t a punishment, it was just another measure the agency took to protect itself.
She indicated to the bartender to refill her shot glass.
“I’m Dvorkin,” the first guy said. “This is Vestergaard.”
“Dvorkin and Vestergaard,” Fawn said. She knocked back her third shot and took a long drink of beer. “Are those really your names?”
Dvorkin nodded.
“They sound made up.”
Dvorkin looked at Vestergaard. Vestergaard shrugged.
“I’m Fawn Aspen.”
“We know,” Dvorkin said.
“So how long do you think you two are going to be following me around?” Fawn said.
She knew the answer. She also knew Dvorkin had no idea how long he’d have the assignment.
“I’m sure not long, ma’am.”
“Do you know why you’re watching me?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Oh, come on. Of course you do.”
“Interagency protocol.”
Fawn rolled her eyes. She wanted to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible. She wanted to make a mess, make a fool of herself, give these two agents, Dvorkin and Vestergaard, a run for their money.
She was pissed off.
“You fellas married?” she said.
They looked at each other.
She rolled her eyes again and turned to the bartender. “Are you?” she said.
“Nope,” he said.
“You got a girlfriend?”
“Not really.”
She held up her shot glass to him and he refilled it. She was feeling it now. The hangover would be wicked. She wasn’t a scotch girl.
“And have you two decided yet?” she said to Dvorkin.
“We’re not married,” Dvorkin said.
She wondered if he knew how stupid he sounded. She wondered what it would be like to have a threesome with them, her and Dvorkin and Vestergaard.
“What do you say we all go back to my place?” she said. “Have some fun?”
Dvorkin was embarrassed. Vestergaard grinned.
“You’re in the front, he’s in the back, I’m in the middle,” she said to Vestergaard.
Dvorkin got up. “I’ll wait outside,” he said.
Fawn knocked back another shot and watched him leave.
“Guess he’s not an ass man,” she said to Vestergaard.
The bartender was enjoying the exchange and Fawn looked at him.
“What about you, big boy? You up for more fun than these squares?”
He shrugged and refilled her shot glass. She hadn’t asked him to. There was her answer.
Fawn kept knocking back the shots and when she woke up she couldn’t even remember leaving the bar. She was in a bed in a shitty apartment somewhere. She was naked apart from her bra, which was down around her waist like a belt. Her mouth was dry. She’d been smoking cigarettes. There was two weeks of trying to quit down the drain.
The man next to her was overweight, unshaven, and snoring.
She got out of the bed and went to the window. The light hurt her eyes. Her detail was outside. There was no mistaking the black, government-issue sedan.
She went to the kitchen and searched for Tylenol, swallowed three pills with water from a dirty glass, then went to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. She shut her eyes and let the water run over her body.
As she got dressed, the bartender woke up and in a hoarse voice said, “You leaving already?”
“That’s right, Casanova,” she said.
He watched her put on her shoes.
“Come back anytime,” he said as she opened the door.
She hurried down the stairs and the cool air outside felt good. It was early, just after seven, and what she really needed was coffee.
She stopped at the Crown Victoria and knocked on the window.
“Where’s Dvor
kin and Vestergaard?” she said to the man in the driver’s seat.
“They’ll be back later,” he said.
“Will you guys give me a ride home?”
“We’re not supposed to.”
What was it with these guys? It wasn’t even real surveillance. They didn’t have to remain concealed. Fawn hadn’t committed a crime. They all worked for the same agency.
“Fine, but if I get the subway, one of you will have to get out in the cold too.”
“You could get a cab,” the agent offered.
Fawn looked at him pointedly.
He looked at his companion.
She got in the back and they drove her home. Once there, she had another shower, more Tylenol, and some strong coffee.
She went back to sleep and it was noon when she woke up. She got up and checked her phone. No messages. Hale was going easy on her. They’d put her through it the day before.
Plus, they knew where she was.
She made more coffee and brought two cups out to the Crown Victoria. Dvorkin and Vestergaard were back on duty.
“Have a good night?” Dvorkin said.
“That could have been you two if you had any balls,” she said.
She left them with the coffee and went back inside. She turned on the TV and sipped coffee while watching Judge Judy.
She called Hale.
“How are you holding up?” he said.
“I’m fine. How long are they going to have me followed?”
“Not long. They’re just covering their asses.”
“I’m taking the day off.”
“All right.”
She knew they wouldn’t let her work on the assassination anyway. They had to wait to see what the blowback would be before letting things go back to normal.
She hung up and switched the channel to CNN. Everything was about the assassination. The assassin’s identity was unknown. His motivation was unknown. The vice president had been sworn in and was scheduled to address the nation from the oval office at two PM.
All the talk was about who’d killed the president and why. Not one mention of the CIA. They played the footage of the air strike incessantly but no one questioned whether or not the strike had been appropriate.
It was too early to tell, but so far so good.