by Rawlin Cash
“You ever hear of a town called Ansbach?”
The Crown Prince thought about it.
“It’s in Franconia,” Hunter said. “In Southern Germany.”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“Well, it held out against the Allies long past the point it should have.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“April eighteenth it surrendered,” Hunter said. “The Russians were already in Berlin. Hitler was days from killing himself in his bunker. Germany had no army, no industry, no allies.”
The Crown Prince nodded.
“It was a Wednesday. The largest ground force in history was just a few miles away. Millions of troops on their doorstep, but this small town with one bridge and two churches refused to surrender.”
“If you say so,” the Crown Prince said.
“But the war was well and truly lost, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Of course it was lost,” the Crown Prince said.
“And the townsfolk knew it.”
“It was obvious.”
“So when the artillery rolled up, one kid in this town decided to do something about it. His name was Robert Limpert. He’d been deemed unfit for military service. He was a theology student. He wasn’t built for war.”
The Crown Prince was eyeing Hunter’s gun.
“He’d seen what was going to happen. He’d been in Würzburg when it was leveled by Allied artillery a few weeks earlier. Fewer than one in ten of the inhabitants survived. He knew the utter devastation that was coming. Everyone in the town did.”
The Crown Prince nodded.
“God’s will, right?” Hunter said.
Even now, minutes from death, the Crown Prince listened.
“So he cut the phone line,” Hunter said. “Cut off the German forces. Tried to prevent the fight.”
“And did it work?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you wouldn’t be telling me this story if it did.”
Hunter smiled. “Smart man.”
“I think he was a traitor to his people.”
Hunter nodded. “That’s exactly how the townsfolk saw it,” he said. “The artillery was preparing to open fire, the town was going to be completely obliterated, but two policemen found the time to ride out on bicycles to Limpert’s house.”
“I see,” the Crown Prince said.
“They rode out and found him in his living room with a gun to his head.”
“So he saved them the bullet?”
“No he did not save them the bullet,” Hunter said. “He let them arrest him and then they walked him back to the police station where the constabulary chief filled out all the forms to book him and charge him.”
“All this while the American’s are preparing the artillery?”
“That’s exactly right,” Hunter said. “And they didn’t just imprison him. They knew they were running out of time, so they called up the head of the civil administration of the town and told him what had happened.”
“And what did this man do?”
“This man rode another bicycle down to the police station.”
“He knew the Americans were preparing to attack?”
“Of course he knew. Everyone knew. They could see the guns on the hills.”
“So he got to the police station?”
“Yes, he got to the police station, he read the report, and then he appointed himself, the constabulary chief, and an officer from the Luftwaffe as a three-man tribunal.”
“They held a trial?”
“They didn’t let Limpert speak.”
“They knew he was guilty.”
“Yes they did. And they ordered him hanged.”
“What about the artillery?”
“It was coming, so they had to act fast. They brought Limpert out to the courtyard. A crowd gathered. Everyone was calling for blood. They just wanted to see this kid die.”
“Have you ever seen a man hang?” the Crown Prince said.
Hunter ignored the question. “The end was coming. They knew it was. And they wanted to hang this kid before it came.”
“So they hanged him?”
Hunter could see the two girls from the brig being boarded onto the chopper. It was time for him to leave.
“Looks like your guards aren’t coming,” he said.
“What happened to the student?” the Crown Prince said.
“What do you care, you’re about to die?”
The Crown Prince nodded. He got the point.
Hunter smiled. He was going to kill the Crown Prince right then, but for some reason he didn’t pull the trigger. He kept talking.
“So they get the noose around Limpert’s neck. But everything’s rushed, and he’s struggling, and he manages to free himself somehow. He runs toward the crowd thinking they’ll help him. It was them he was trying to save from the artillery.”
“But they turn on him,” the Crown Prince said.
“You know it,” Hunter said. “They bear down on him with a vengeance, kicking and punching him half to death until the constabulary chief stops them and pulls Limpert back to the gallows.”
“So they do hang him?”
“They try again, but this time, when the rope takes Limpert’s full weight, it breaks.”
“That’s very painful.”
“Yes it is, but they don’t let it stop them.”
“They try a third time?”
“Yes they do, and that’s when they finally hang him.”
“He died?”
“Of course he died? They hung him.”
“And that’s the moral of your story?”
“Who said there’s a moral?”
“Then why tell it?”
“I told you I knew where I came from.”
“What are you saying? Limpert was your grandfather?”
Hunter laughed. “Limpert had no children,” he said. “He died when he was nineteen.”
The Crown Prince nodded, and Hunter shot him. A single bullet to the center of the forehead. He fell backward onto the bed. His headscarf turned crimson. Hunter walked over to him and put another bullet in his head.
“The moral of the story,” he said to the Crown Prince’s corpse, “is that we fight because we fight.”
Then he went out to the deck and not a soul opposed him. The pilots were still in the chopper and they waited for him. When he got on board, they lifted off and no one fired at them. They flew west over the Red Sea and an hour later they were touching down at Port Sudan, a hundred miles to the west.
Fifty-Eight
The US embassy in Khartoum took responsibility for the rescued children. They promised Hunter they wouldn’t be returned to Saudi Arabia, and given the fact the Kingdom had just severed diplomatic relations with Washington, he felt he could rely on that.
He didn’t speak to the children on the chopper, he didn’t learn their names or where they were from. He didn’t care to. He tried not to think of them. He tried not to think of all the other slaves in the Kingdom or the fact there were a thousand other members of the Saudi Royal family who would step up to take the place of the Crown Prince.
He’d changed nothing.
He’d fixed nothing.
He’d saved no one.
But he was a soldier. And he’d done his job.
He thought about that on the flight back to Washington. He flew commercial and changed planes in Istanbul. He was traveling under an assumed identity but he knew there was a chance he’d be arrested.
He didn’t sleep on the flight. He spent the night thinking.
Not about the president. Not about the Saudis. He thought about what he always thought about. He thought about a concrete room, deep beneath an American base on the outskirts of Kabul.
And as the plane circled Dulles International Airport, he decided that what had happened in that room could not be allowed to stand. Hale had ordered him to kill his own men. Hunter had shot them, one after the other, in th
e back of the skull.
That wasn’t right.
That had to be avenged.
And so, Hunter was going to kill Jeff Hale.
He slipped through the airport concealing his face as much as possible. He passed the border with a passport from his personal stash. He’d taken the step of telling Fawn he was staying in Khartoum a few extra days and then left his phone and electronic devices in his hotel there.
No one was looking for him.
At Dulles he caught a cab to a men’s health club in Georgetown where he had a private locker. The locker contained a Smith and Wesson M&P pistol that had belonged to a DEA officer Hunter met in Mexico. It was chambered in the .357 SIG.
He picked up the gun and went to a diner near the White House that he knew well. It was one of the cheapest places to get a decent meal in the area and interns and low-level staffers from the White House went there a lot.
He took a seat at the counter and ordered black coffee. The waitress brought it. He was tired so he added sugar. He stirred the cup and looked around the room. There were interns at various tables and he kept an eye on them.
Hale was scheduled to meet with the President later that morning. Before the meeting he would be in the East Wing for a briefing.
Hunter’s plan was to get him as his vehicle entered the East Wing. Vehicles visiting the East Wing passed through an automatic gate and into a concrete holding area where they were screened by a Secret Service K-9 unit. The area was recessed to shield it from view. After screening, the vehicles proceeded to the building entrance where the visitor was formally welcomed.
Hunter sat at the counter and watched the guests come and go. He was waiting for someone with an East Wing lanyard to come in. He didn’t have to wait long. A group of East Wing interns came in and sat at a booth near him.
“Can I get you anything?” the waitress said.
Hunter hadn’t looked at the menu. “Eggs, easy over, with bacon.”
“Toast?”
“White,” he said.
She refilled his coffee and he added more sugar.
“You visiting town?” she said.
He wondered why she asked that. He wasn’t carrying a bag.
“What gave it away?” he said.
“You have that look,” she said. “Like you just got off a long bus ride.”
Hunter nodded. He hadn’t shaved on the flight, or showered, or changed clothes.
“Yeah, I just got off a long flight.”
“What brings you to town?”
Hunter looked at her. She was young, early twenties, very pretty. A little too confident. “I’m here to see an old friend,” he said.
He looked around the diner again but nothing was amiss. He knew though. He had that feeling. There was no mistaking it. Something was up and it was already too late.
“You here to see one friend or two?” the girl said.
She had Langley written all over her now. There was no mistaking it.
Hunter sighed.
“Where is she?”
“Who?” the waitress said.
“Fawn.”
She smiled, then went back to the kitchen. A moment later, Fawn emerged. She took a seat at the counter next to Hunter.
“Does this mean I’m not getting the eggs?” Hunter said.
“Maybe she passed your order on,” Fawn said.
Hunter smiled. It felt good to see Fawn, even under the circumstances.
“How did you know I’d be here?” he said.
She smiled. “I know you better than you know yourself.”
Hunter nodded. He’d been to that diner before but it had been years ago.
“Then you must know why I’m doing this,” he said.
“I do,” she said.
“But you want to stop me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Hmm,” Hunter said.
Fawn looked at him. “You don’t remember what you think you remember,” she said.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“We were watching you from above.”
Hunter nodded. “Since I landed?”
“Yes.”
“The passport?”
“No, the passport was clean, but I knew you were coming.”
“I must be getting old.”
“You knew I’d be watching.”
Hunter shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe you don’t want to kill the old man as much as you think you do.”
“Want’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Well, if you kill him, you might as well kill yourself too.”
Hunter shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”
Fawn pulled a phone from her pocket and handed it to him along with some headphones. There was a video set up but Hunter didn’t hit play. He wasn’t sure he was ready to see it.
A waitress, the real one, came out from the kitchen with his bacon and eggs and put it in front of him.
“Bring my friend some coffee,” Hunter said.
“Friend?” Fawn said when the waitress left.
Hunter shrugged again.
“I took care of the child,” she said.
“She’s with a family?”
“Yes. Nice people. Young. Hispanic. They couldn’t get pregnant and wanted a kid.”
“In Texas?”
“They’re from Puerto Peñasco but they live in New Mexico.”
Hunter nodded. New Mexico was as good a place as any to raise a kid.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. “You did what I asked.”
“Got your man?”
“Yes, and then you went and did a little something no one asked for.”
“The Crown Prince? That one’s on the house.”
Fawn nodded. After what the Saudis had done, she was getting very little blowback. It was being kept secret that the Saudis were involved in the assassinations. The Saudis were keeping the Crown Prince’s death a secret too. A story was already being circulated about a crazed white guy from Appalachia being the assassin. It was the kind of story the media liked to believe.
“So, what’s the deal with Meredith? Are we keeping her?”
“I think so. That’s what Hale’s meeting her about.”
“Cutting a deal?” Hunter said.
“No doubt. I guess he’s of the opinion she was just a pawn in the whole thing. No one knows but him. He’ll hold it over her to get what he wants, and in exchange, she gets to be the first female president of the country.”
“How tidy.”
“Yeah.”
Fawn took a sip from her coffee. Hunter ate some bacon.
“So you were really thinking about killing the old man?” Fawn said after a brief silence.
Hunter shrugged. “At least it would be some closure.”
“You’ve got to stop eventually.”
“Yeah, after I kill him.”
“You want to watch the video?”
“I think I already know what’s on it.”
Fawn nodded. “Watch it anyway. Get a refresh.”
“It could be doctored.”
“It’s not doctored.”
Hunter put on the headphones and pressed play.
The footage was of him and Hale in the black site interrogation room. Hunter’s memories of the place were compromised. He didn’t remember much, and what he did remember he couldn’t trust. But he knew the footage was real. The details were just familiar enough.
The video showed Hale. He was speaking.
“You won’t remember these conversations,” Hale said.
He was speaking to Hunter.
Hunter looked at his own face. It was the face of a man who no longer existed. Whatever Hale had done to him, whatever he’d erased, he’d taken away enough to make sure that man was gone forever.
Hale said, “If you disappear, and then you start remembering what I just had you do, you might come back for me.”
Hunter looked at Faw
n. She motioned for him to keep watching the video.
It was already coming back.
It was happening just as Hale said it would. Hunter couldn’t remember everything, it was foggy, but he could remember the broad strokes. He knew what Hale had made him do. He could remember the bitter taste of it, the bile at the back of his throat.
And he could remember wanting to kill Hale.
“I know that too,” Hunter said.
Hunter watched himself in the video and it came back to him. He remembered saying the words. He remembered the emotion, the rage, that had been coursing through his veins.
And he knew killing Hale wasn’t the answer.
He let out a deep sigh.
He’d known all along. Deep down, he’d known. It was the only thing that allowed him to live with himself.
What Hale had ordered him to do, to kill the other agents, it was necessary.
Hunter was angry about it, there was a rage inside him, but he’d obeyed the order for one reason and one reason only. Because it was correct.
He could still go through with it.
He could kill Hale.
He could kill himself.
He could burn the whole world to the ground.
His grandfather’s father might have made that decision. The man had done a lot of things in his life. He’d crossed an ocean. He’d brought his family to Texas. He’d been a constabulary chief in a small town.
He’d fought fights he couldn’t win.
That wasn’t Hunter. Maybe it had been once, maybe that blood was in his veins, it sure as hell was in his grandfather’s.
But not today.
The fight was over. There was no point keeping it going.
Hale had ordered him to kill those agents for one reason, because they needed to die.
And that was the reason Hunter had done it. Because they needed to die and because anyone else would have botched it.
He wasn’t sure he would ever come to terms with what he’d done, but he could let Hale live.
He handed the phone back to Fawn.
“What now?” she said. “You still going to jump one of these kids for their security pass?”
Hunter shook his head. “I guess I’ll finish this breakfast,” he said.
“What then?”
“Give me the address of those people in New Mexico. I want to see for myself.”
Fifty-Nine