by Lee Perry
He pulled his vehicle in alongside Patton’s and got out, noting how the other three members of the group had set up camp; two small tents bracketing a much larger tent, the three arranged in a semicircle around a large barbeque pit. He grabbed his camera bag and the bag with his laptops and exited, careful to lock the door. Johnson, Parker and Holden exited the middle tent and stood quietly as he and Patton approached,
“Let’s talk inside…” Patton said quietly and they trooped back in, single file.
Jeffers was pleased to see a folding dining table and five chairs and he walked to the head of the table and sat, “Gentlemen,” he gestured, “please sit.”
They each took a seat and while he took out his camera and laptop, Holden asked, “So?”
“The hacker made a sudden move,” Patton answered, “she dropped something right as I pulled the trigger and missed.”
“That’s too bad…” Parker was a beefy man and he sat with his arms crossed over his barrel chest, resting them on a gut distended from too many years spent sitting while drinking too much beer.
“Did you say, she?” Holden asked.
“Oh yes,” Patton folded muscular arms across his equally muscular chest, “And quite a pretty one too.”
Jeffers noted that Patton left out the part about her being FBI, Interesting… he was careful to keep from smiling, Mister Patton is indeed, very smart. “Yes…” he finally spoke, “I was quite surprised to see a nice-looking woman instead of some flabby unkempt person at the designated meeting place. It was unfortunate about the miss, but, you can’t help these things… and truthfully, sometimes it’s fate. Therefore, I can only conclude it was meant to be, and that this hacker may prove useful in some other capacity down the line.” He folded his hands together on the table, “Gentlemen, we have our objective in sight and you must now prove your loyalty and performance as a team… as in Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel, the most powerful, most elite organization in the Third Reich.” He paused for effect then added, “The Schutzstaffel was also known as the SS… and you, my Silver Shirts, will soon be widely known as my SS, your names will be spoken with reverence by the deserving and fearfully whispered by those who will fall before us and beg for mercy…”
“And receive none.” Patton finished in a low voice and Jeffers graced him with an approving smile.
“I’ll pay you your monthly salary early and if, from this point on, you follow every directive completely and without question or hesitation, I will give you a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars once my software has completed its task.”
A smiling Holden turned to give Johnson a high-five.
Jeffers held up a hand to silence the already quiet group, “But you will also gain something much more valuable; a place in my new government. You will be my inner circle when I rise as this country’s new leader.”
“Yeah…” Parker nodded decisively, his expression intense. “I’m ready.” He thumped the table with a thick forefinger, “It’s fuckin’ go time.”
Jeffers nodded, “For this is the hour,” he stood, prompting the others to stand, “do you believe?”
“Ja, Herr Schmidt,” They intoned in quiet unison, lest their voices be carried outside the tent, “I believe and dedicate my life as a Silver Shirt to the Legion.” All four tapped their right fist twice over their hearts then extended their hands, held palm down in a classic Nazi salute.
“And so we will rise…” Jeffers intoned, “For we are Silver Legion.”
New York City, NY
Catherine collected Cam at daycare and after explaining their latest adventure to him, assured him his favorite toys and bedtime companions were going to be delivered in time for bed.
“Glo’ and Teddy too…”
It was more statement than question and Catherine looked deep into his eyes, “Yes, they are on their way to our house now to pick them up and they will come straight back here with them, okay?”
“Okay,” he looked down at the toy car he held, “We still having pizza for dinner?”
“It’s on the way,” she nodded, “I called from the car, we’re having it tonight but tomorrow night I was thinking we’d have meatloaf and mashed potatoes.”
“With gravy?”
“Of course, with gravy.” She snickered and when the elevator doors opened she was surprised to see Bea waiting for her, “Hey… hi Bea…” She introduced Cameron to the leader of Cyber Division as Ms. McNamara but Bea waved her off, smiling,
“You can call me Bea.”
“Like the letter B?” he asked.
“Sort of, it’s short for Beatrice.”
Cameron pursed his lips thoughtfully while he ingested that and she led them down the hall, “Stewart called me after I talked to you about dinner; he said he and Jordan were on the way so she should be right behind you…” She saw Cameron turn and look expectantly behind him and she added, “Sort of.” She stopped in front of an innocuous-looking door and handed Catherine a magnetized ID card. “This is your keycard for the apartment,” she took out her own keycard and slid it through a card reader in the control panel next to the door, “I’m going to set it up for you to embed a personalized code for your card so only you can use it to enter. I’ll do the same for Jordan on hers…” she stepped back, “Okay, slide yours and when it asks, enter an eight-digit code as your pin.”
Catherine ran the card, entering Jordan’s date of birth, “It’s asking for authorization.”
Bea stepped back to the panel and slid her keycard again, entering her authorization code, “There, now you’re set.” She opened the door and they walked in, “The windows are reflective in the daytime, you still have to draw the curtains at night. You can order whatever you want from whatever restaurant in town…” She tapped a laminated number on the phone in the kitchen, “You just have to call this number to do it; it’s bureau services and they’ll order it, have it delivered to them and bring it up.” She turned to a desk with a computer, “When the doorbell rings, this will pop on so you can see who’s at the door. Everything that comes here for you goes through two checkpoints and there’s a third to get to the elevator to come up here.” She waved her hand dismissively; “I sent you an email so you can access all of this…” She stopped to give her a sly wink, “Not that you’ll need that to figure it out.”
“Thank you, Bea…” Catherine suddenly felt exhausted and when the doorbell chimed, Jordan appeared on the monitor.
Bea opened the door, “Well well, Agent Hawkins, you do look worse for wear this evening.”
Jordan drawled, “Thanks, Bea.”
She gave Jordan a keycard and repeated the process with her and Catherine flopped onto the couch, watching them with a smile as Cameron ran to greet her. She lifted him onto her hip with a grimace and Catherine called to him when he reached to touch the bandage on Jordan’s neck,
“Careful Cam, look but don’t touch.”
“What happened Jordan?”
“I had an accident at work,” she sighed, “and I got a bad owie.”
Bea took her through the process of encoding her keycard and when the process was complete, an agent stepped from the elevator with a large brown grocery bag and a pizza box.
“Jordan!” he slid from her hip to the floor and tugged at her slacks, “We’re having pizza for dinner!” He turned and ran back into the apartment, “Mom! Dinner’s here!”
Jordan lay spread-eagle on the bed wearing only panties and Catherine rechecked the baby monitor the agents brought from home. “Ordinarily,” she murmured, climbing on to the bed next to her, “I would initiate some ardent lovemaking, given your easy access.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
She pulled the covers over them both and stopped at Jordan’s bruised knees, “This…” she stroked the skin around the dark splotches then pulled the covers up and over Jordan’s breasts, “and I noticed the scrapes on your palms during dinner.”
“It’s just from when I fell; concrete is really hard.�
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She snuggled under the covers next to her, “And the bruising on your neck and shoulder is spreading and getting darker too. I’m going to bet you’ll be plenty stiff and sore in the morning.”
Jordan rolled cautiously onto her side, facing her, “I really am okay you know.”
“You are more than okay, Agent Hawkins, you are amazing. But I think we should defer lovemaking until tomorrow night, when an endorphin rush might be more reparative.”
“One of your endless orgasms could be pretty reparative now too.”
“Alright then,” Catherine purred and rolled on top, straddling a long, lean thigh, “let’s see how this goes…” She bent to plant warm lips on hers, and Jordan’s eyes fluttered closed in rapture as tongues stroked and caressed the other.
Jordan felt increasingly breathless, her hands slid up the length of Catherine’s arms, and when she pulled her close, she suddenly cried out at the pain that flamed through her neck and shoulder, “Shitfuckinsonofabitch!”
Catherine immediately slid off to the side, “Oh, my god, Jordan…”
“Oh…” Jordan panted, holding still until the waves of pain diminished a little, “Fuck that little Jeffers prick…”
“This is what I was afraid would happen.” Catherine left the bed, retreating to the connecting bathroom.
“Wait,” Jordan grunted, shielding her eyes from the sudden glare of the bathroom’s overhead light, “I’m okay, I swear.”
“I know,” the light briefly reflected tantalizingly off her nude form before she turned the light off. “But no more arguments Jordan, please. The doctor gave you pain medication to help you sleep tonight and now you need to take it.” She climbed onto the bed, pills in one hand and a glass of water in the other.
“I don’t need it…”
“You do Jordan, look, if someone makes it past three different levels of security and manages to get in the door somehow I promise to wake you so you can shoot them, okay?”
Jordan scowled at the pills in her hand, “Alright, but I’m only taking one of those.”
“Great,” Catherine’s smile was bright, “I’ll settle for that.” Jordan sat up enough to swallow the pill and water and Catherine took the glass from her, leaving it and the second pill on the nightstand. Sitting at Jordan’s side, she gazed down at the twin gauze bandages, “It’s odd, isn’t it?” She leaned across her, and careful to support her weight on the hand she rested on the bed, she touched the scars on her own neck with the other, “We’re sort of twins now.”
“Well,” Jordan pulled the small hand down and pressed it against her chest, “I’m still a lot taller than you…” she waited for the smile before adding, “but the damage done by Jeffers today is nothing compared to what you’ve endured.” Catherine only smiled and Jordan’s voice thickened as she struggled to speak past the lump forming in her throat, “Kiss me.”
Williamsport, PA
Jeffers connected the high definition camera to the larger of his laptops and accessed the footage he’d taken of Patton’s unsuccessful assassination. He had every expectation of watching as Patton blew the head off some flabby unkempt-looking hacker and was shocked to see a beautiful woman holding the bouquet of scarlet carnations in her hands. He knew Patton was correct in immediately vacating the sniper’s nest, but part of him wanted to stay and continue to film the chaos happening nearly three blocks away. When his hacker was revealed as a beautiful FBI agent his surprise turned to rage, and in the intervening hours he developed a new plan; Only some slight revisions need be implemented… He smiled, grateful the campground had wifi, and connected an external mouse so he could cut and paste the image of the FBI agent with greater ease. He hacked into an online facial recognition program, sold by a software company to retailers for their security cameras, and after pasting the woman’s face in the search window, he ran the program against an image search for New York newspapers. He tilted a bottle against his lips and swallowed lukewarm beer, grateful for the kerosene heater set up in the tent. He pushed back against the folding chair until the front legs left the canvas floor and sighed, letting his eyes drift closed so he could review his new game plan until the program emitted a soft beep in completion.
He sat forward, thumping the chair back onto all four legs, Oh yeah, that’s gotta’ be her… He clicked on the visit page icon that navigated to an article in the New York Times about the FBI busting a mafia family and he clicked on the link for a related news video,
“The tragic story that began nearly a year ago with the murder of a little girl and her mother has finally come to an end. It was two months ago today that the head of the Rossi crime family and his associates were taken into custody during a bizarre pair of simultaneous raids in Darien, Connecticut, and the list of charges against Anthony Rossi and the five remaining members of the Rossi outfit are now over one hundred pages long. Chief among them; conspiracy to murder and murder of a woman and her little girl, the wife and daughter of Alexandra Sparrow, a Rossi associate killed during the raid on a warehouse owned by Rossi, as well as the murders of five FBI agents. Their attorneys are preparing aggressive defenses, but their odds of receiving lenient sentences are bleak considering the mountain of evidence captured by the raid on the warehouse…”
The video showed people descending a white granite staircase in front of the courthouse and Jeffers briefly fumbled with the mouse as he hurried to freeze the image on the screen of a tall woman in a dark suit, Oh yeah… that is definitely you. He clicked the back arrow key to return to the search results page and when he clicked on another newspaper image; his grin became huge when he read the caption under the black and white photograph,
“FBI Special Agent Jordan Hawkins”
He moistened his lips and sitting back in the chair, raised the bottle to his lips and poured the last of the beer down his throat. When he looked back at Jordan’s image on the screen he whispered, “Gotcha’.”
New York City, NY
They ate breakfast together in the cafeteria and when they dropped off Cameron at daycare, he pulled on her hand,
“Jordan, do we live here now?”
She lifted him onto her left hip, trying not to grimace, “Cam, we’re only here for a few days, I promise. Your mom and I just have a lot of work to do, so we figured if we stay here we can get our work done and still have our family time together, that’s all.” She pressed her forehead against his, peering intently into his eyes, “Is that okay?”
He peered intently back into deep blue, “Yes, Jordan… we’ll go home for Thanksgiving?”
She tried not to hesitate, “I’m pretty sure, buddy, I’m working hard so we can, alright?”
“Okay…” He seemed satisfied with her honest answer and after giving her a kiss, slid from her hip back down to the floor, “Bye, mom.” He stood on tiptoe to kiss Catherine.
“Have fun…”
“I will.” He ran to join the other kids and shouted over his shoulder, “Bye, Jordan!”
Catherine took her hand, “Let’s get to work then.”
She stole looks at her as they rode the elevator up to their office and Jordan caught her, “I’m stiff this morning, but otherwise I’m fine…” She took the smaller hand in her own, “I’ll go to the gym for a light workout so I can loosen up…”
“I brought your meds.” Catherine patted her jacket pocket with her free hand.
Jordan gave the hand a tug, “I can’t take that stuff during the day.” When Catherine looked at her with worried concern she added, “I can’t, Catherine, really.”
She nodded, heaving a heavy sigh and turned her eyes to the elevator’s floor indicator, “This never would have happened if I’d been able to see it beforehand…”
Jordan’s brows arched, “Beforehand? Like what, in one of those dreams?” Catherine nodded, lifting a shoulder in a shrug at the same time. “Oh, my god…” Jordan quickly pushed another floor button, “Catherine,” her voice was commanding and she turned sad brown eyes up to her,
“you cannot blame yourself for not psychically seeing or anticipating that beforehand…”
“I take it we’re going to see Lianna now?”
“If she’s free, yes, I think we should.” She bent to place a quick kiss on her lips, “I can’t work if you’re blaming yourself for things only Jeffers is responsible for.”
Williamsport, PA
He had shown them the realtor listing of the place, and after they had made low whistles of envy at the property’s particulars, he closed his laptop, “Alright now…” He straightened and circled around to the other side of the table, wanting some distance between them, “Look, yes, this is a big place; nine bedrooms, eight bathrooms, two kitchens and three fireplaces, a separate guest house…” He folded his arms across his chest and waited until he had their full attention, “You’ll likely have places like this of your own one day, but what you need to concentrate on is the fact that our target’s residence is located on just under five acres at the end of a cul-de-sac.” His brows arched, “What does that mean?”
Patton spoke up, “It means we’ll have all the privacy we need for what we need to do…” He arched his eyebrows back at Jeffers, “Provided we don’t have too many targets to subdue, other than our primary.” He shook his head worriedly, “It’s such a big place, too many places to hide and call the cops.”
“I have an appointment with Mister Dempsey,” Jeffers spoke with quiet authority, “and I am the one who will subdue him. He’s expecting me to give him a sales pitch of a sort for a fat pile of new mortgage defaults about to hit the market.”