Hollow Point

by Rawlin Cash

  Hunter's heart pounded more than 140 beats per minute.

  He collapsed when the MI6 chopper arrived.

  Raynor had come to by that point and had thought about leaving Hunter behind. He thought against it. Whoever had saved him was as much a monster as he was a hero.

  PART 3 - BLOOD

  Sixty-Eight

  Hunter woke up in a hospital. It was American. His vision was blurry, and he was confused. A nurse in blue scrubs stood over him.

  "He's awake," she shouted.

  Hunter tried to speak but couldn't.

  He tried to get up, but his wrists were handcuffed to the hospital bed.

  "What the hell?" he finally muttered.

  A flood of light overwhelmed him. A door was open. Someone was running to his side.

  "Margot?" he said. "Is that you?"

  Fawn looked down at Hunter and placed her hand on his shoulder. "It's me. It's Fawn."

  "What's going on? Where's Kim? Where's Yong?"

  The nurse ran to him and injected a relaxant into his arm. Hunter grunted. The nurse was rough with him. It felt like he was being stabbed, but the drugs worked well. He could feel his heart rate slow. He took a deep breath.

  His vision was better.

  "What the hell is going on?" he said to Fawn. "What happened?"

  "You don't remember, do you?"

  "All I remember is rescuing the President…" Everything is black.

  "You rescued the President," Fawn said. "Raynor is back in office. But… you murdered a captured American soldier in the process. The President requested your arrest when we landed."

  A flood of memories swelled back into his head.

  Feelings.

  Things he couldn't control.

  Hunter began to cough.

  "After you killed him, you lost consciousness. The Liberators, the rebel faction in North Korea, they used an encrypted KPA communication channel to reach out to MI6, and MI6 sent a chopper to pick you up. Everything went to plan. It looks like Operation Hollow Point went off without a hitch. Margot was right about everything."

  Hunter smirked hearing Fawn say that. She couldn't have been further from the truth. The operation had been a complete shit show—everything that could go wrong went wrong.

  "And Margot?" he asked.

  "She's gone."

  "Gone?"

  "I've reached out to MI6. They said they hadn't heard from her in days. They're looking for her."

  Hunter grunted.

  Fawn turned to the nurse and whispered in her ear.

  The nurse nodded and left the room.

  "What now?" Hunter said.

  Fawn looked at him.

  "I'm leaving the CIA. I'm done with this bullshit. I've already told the Director. He's accepted my resignation."

  "But this is all you've known?" Hunter said.

  "I need to move on," Fawn said. "I don't want to end up like Jeff…"

  "Like me…" Hunter said. "I get it."

  "But I'm going to help you," Fawn said. "I'm going to help you get out of here."

  "Why?"

  "Because I love you, Jack," she said. Tears swelled in her eyes as she said it. "I always have. And I know you will never love me."

  Hunter looked at her. "I'd, uh, give you a hug…"

  He moved his arms, and the cuffs rattled.

  "Don't bother," Fawn said dismissively. "Margot is your future."

  "And she's gone…"

  Fawn took a deep breath. "Hank gave me this. It's a USB stick, and it contains a video that will only play once. He says if you want to find Margot, you need to watch it."

  "Have you watched it?" Hunter said.

  "It will only play once," Fawn said. "No."

  The nurse knocked on the door. Fawn opened it and let the nurse in. She pushed in a gurney. There was a body on it.

  "The Director gave me one final assignment," Fawn said.

  "What was that?"

  "It was to kill you. He's just about to re-stabilize things between the White House and the CIA. He's trying to clean house."

  She undid Hunter's handcuffs.

  He pulled himself up.

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "I already told you."

  "And where will you go?" Hunter asked.

  "I'm going to disappear."

  "Fawn," he said.

  He looked at her with tender eyes.

  Fawn turned away. She couldn't bear it.

  "Underneath that gurney is enough G-12 to stabilize your blood levels for the next sixty years." She gestured to the gurney the nurse just brought in.

  "I don't think I'll live that long," Hunter said.

  "We'll see," Fawn said.

  "You need to get off your bed. We're replacing you with the body on the gurney."

  Hunter pushed himself up and stood weakly as the nurses moved the body onto Hunter’s gurney and shackled its wrists.

  He laid down on the now-empty gurney. Before the nurse put a sheet over his head, Fawn asked him one last question. "What is it about Margot? What do you see in her?"

  Hunter was still coming to terms with everything, but he wanted to tell Fawn the truth.

  "She reminds me of you."

  Fawn was shocked by the response. She didn't know what to say. She turned to the nurse, and the nurse nodded.

  The nurse pulled the sheet over Hunter's head and wheeled him out of the room.

  Fawn stood in silence.

  Unsure of everything.

  Now, more than ever.

  Sixty-Nine

  Would things be better in North Korea?

  Kim and Yong weren't sure. The most important thing they'd accomplished with Hunter was broadcasting the message out into the home of every soldier and citizen in the country, telling them that they were not alone and undermining China's takeover of their country.

  They hoped things would be better, but it was a lot as Hunter had warned them it would be. No matter how well they'd thought they'd played the West, the West still played them more.

  A new Supreme Leader had been instituted. His name was Jun Pak-jung, and he seemed a lot like the last one.

  MI6 and now CIA officials had explained to Yong that it was necessary.

  They couldn't change up the entire order of the region on the fly. Yong could appreciate the hesitation. They needed the change to be gradual. MI6 explained it like this: We need to un-brainwash your entire country.

  Yong had no choice but to accept the results.

  It was better than nothing.

  After the events at the installation, Yong and Kim went back to Wung. The villagers had returned and were rebuilding what Park had destroyed.

  Part of the tentative peace agreement the North Korean government signed with the United States meant that the military was going to be monitored by Western powers. That meant political prisoners, villagers who'd spoken out against the government, and others were going to be freed from the prisons.

  The DMZ cutting North Korea from South Korea was going to shut down, and an open border would be set up. Families would be reunited. The nation was going to change.

  Both Yong and Kim felt assured that they'd made the right move in working with MI6. They'd both learned that a brutal, bloody conflict would not work out in the advantage.

  Nothing would.

  Seventy

  The waves roared as they crashed into the rocky shore. The sun was setting, and a slight breeze made the curtains flutter. The compound atop the cliff on an island close to the Bahamas was undisturbed. It was a large estate. Private and secure.

  It'd survived three hurricanes already.

  While the island it rested on was small, the compound was large. Outside its front doors was a helipad, and along the shore was a dock large enough for a small yacht.

  Local fishermen knew about the island.

  They believed it belonged to some billionaire with a bizarre fetish. It was his sex island, they called it. They never saw anyone come or go in the d
ay, but they could hear the helicopters come in and out at night. They always came in the dark. They stayed away, knowing that it would only be trouble if they got close.

  The house was occupied by one man only.

  A man who liked to have his hands in the cookie jar—who liked to control things. Or, at least, one time did.

  Hale sipped his morning coffee and read the news on his laptop. He was sat next to a large window that overlooked the blue ocean, and he enjoyed the warm breeze.

  Retirement, they'd called it.

  A man like him only gets to spend so long at the top before they decide to pull the rug out from under him. He had two choices: disappear or die.

  Hank chose to disappear.

  He chose purgatory.

  He wasn't ready to burn in the flames of Hell. He knew he was headed down when the curtain finally dropped.

  They set him up on the island, told him he had access to the internet, but everything would be monitored. If he contacted anyone, made any phone calls, tried to leave, he'd be killed. Apparently, they'd lined the whole island with noxious gas. They'd simply hit a switch, and that would be it. He'd be dead in minutes.

  They delivered food once a month via a helicopter.

  And that was it.

  Hale would spend the rest of his life secluded and apart. He'd briefly touched power greater than he'd ever imagined. He was the National Security Advisor for President Meredith. The Oval Office was his. He thought he had an in on her. He thought he'd be able to control the Presidency. She was, after all, deeply indebted to the Saudi Royal family.

  But Washington had changed.

  The rules had changed.

  Those in power weren't holding office, or, at least, any public position. The ones pulling strings were ghosts, illusions. They were in board rooms. They controlled the propaganda that fed the nation's appetite for cheap entertainment.

  He'd had been stupid.

  He'd let his ego get to him.

  He was Icarus, and now he was fallen.

  His wings burned to ash.

  For the first few years, he didn't mind the time alone. It gave him some space to breathe. He read books he'd been planning on reading for years. He paid particular attention to the works of Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor.

  He did what he was told.

  He followed the rules and never broke them.

  He didn't communicate with anyone.

  Not his wife, nor anyone else in his family.

  They all thought he was dead.

  But at the end of the day, Hale wasn't someone to just let go. He always had a Plan B—a contingency.

  Hank Trail was a close associate of his. During his time at the NSA, Hale saw the writing on the wall. He'd realized the world was changing. He'd asked Hank to help if… shit ever hit the fan.

  Hank implanted a chip in Hale.

  It was secret and inactive until Hale activated it himself. It was a satellite-linked communication chip. It leveraged private companies' satellites. Hank's cover at the CIA was working as an engineer for the company.

  Hale bypassed the security placed in him.

  He began to make moves.

  He knew who his enemies were.

  They were them.

  They.

  The controllers.

  The first thing he did was leak his Mantis documents to a Chinese doctor he knew was vulnerable. The second thing he did was send Hank the video on the USB stick to give to Hunter when the time was right.

  As he sipped his coffee and listened to the breeze, he took a deep breath. It'd been ages since he'd seen anyone in the flesh, so when he saw Jack Hunter approach, he almost thought it was an illusion. He almost thought it wasn't real.

  "Where is she?" Hunter asked.

  "It's been a long time, old friend. The last time we talked… you threatened to kill me."

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “The MI6 agent who helped in Amsterdam. Margot Fox.”

  “So, you watched the video.”

  “Yes,” Hunter said.

  The contents of the video changed everything. Hale and Hank gave Doctor Lin access to the Mantis files. They knew the Doctor would try to sell it to the highest bidder. The files were contained on a small device that had a nerve agent inside it. Hank activated the nerve agent when it was clear Hunter wasn’t going to get to the Doctor before the Chinese. He also erased the files on the device.

  In other words, Mantis was safe.

  But Doctor Lin was simply a ploy, a way for Hale to get to Hunter.

  "You're already dead. What is this?"

  "This is the truth, son. I was playing games at the CIA. I thought I was in control, but I wasn't. I was just another cog in another wheel, and I had no idea which direction we were spinning."

  "Where is Margot?"

  “She’s probably been kidnapped by the Chinese. It's payback. They were on to her the day Doctor Lin died in Amsterdam, y’know.”

  "How do you know?"

  “I still have my secrets.”

  Hunter looked around the lavish place. "Who sent you up here? What is going on?"

  Hale smiled. "If you want to rob a bank, you need a gun. If you want to rob the world, you need a bank."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means I was wrong about everything. It means that I need your help… and the threat of Mantis coming back was the only way I knew I would get your attention."

  Hunter wanted to kill him.

  He'd fantasized about it for years.

  The man who'd broken his memory, who'd made him addicted to a drug to simply get by.

  But if he knew where Margot was, he'd have to play along.

  For now.