The Subway

by Dustin Stevens

  But it was a turning point moment for sure. A spot that one day schoolchildren across the countryside would read about in text books.

  The night that a hero came forward, and Venezuela moved toward finally taking back what was theirs.

  The preparations for the night had been in motion since the start of the campaign a month prior, though the big surprise they had in store was something they had thrown together just a few days before. The brainchild of Ruiz, Ramon, and himself, it was something so bold that it would either submarine them or catapult them into the stratosphere.

  No middle ground whatsoever.

  Belmonte was betting everything he had on the latter.

  Raising a bottle of water to his lips, he asked, “How much time do we have?”

  At the sound of his voice, any hint of side discussion bled away. Every head turned in his direction.

  “We go on in sixteen minutes, sir,” Ruiz said.

  “And how many people do we have out there right now?”

  “There are still about a thousand waiting to file in from outside,” Ramon answered. “They should all be in place in time.”

  Belmonte nodded. Tonight would be one of the most photographed and talked about in his nation’s history. It was imperative that every image showed a full stadium behind him.

  Sixteen minutes should be more than enough time to ensure that happened.

  Chapter Two

  The feed coming in was grainy and distorted. It jumped every few moments, reminding the people around the table of being inside a darkened room with a strobe light going at full capacity.

  Brief pockets of darkness interspersed with snippets of light, each offset enough that things seemed to be jumping ahead instead of moving in smooth motion.

  “Is this the best we can do?” Charles Vance asked from the head of the table. Despite the late hour, he was still wearing his full suit, the navy blue material free of wrinkles. Twisted sideways, the heel of one polished wingtip rested on the corner of the table.

  As Special Director for South American Operations, there was plenty on Vance’s plate to keep him working ninety hours a week or more. In the previous year, the situation in Venezuela had escalated to a point that a country that had earned five percent of his attention when he started was now demanding almost a full day a week.

  This tonight was just the latest example. One more in what had been an interminable slog through the sham known as election season in that part of the world.

  “Let me see what I can do, sir,” a young man in the corner said. His age alone would have been enough to demarcate him as the tech wizard in the room. The shaggy hair and eyebrow ring he wore drove home that assumption.

  Despite all that, he was still wearing a suit. It was ill fitting and the tie was loosened, but it was a suit.

  Vance demanded as much from every person in his employee. Regardless of gender or time of day. Regardless of location.

  If they were on the clock, they would look the part.

  The room was one of several tucked away in the bowels of the Central Intelligence Agency spread outside of the nation’s capital. Buried beneath three floors of concrete and soil, no more than a handful of people even knew that it was taking place.

  Of those, most were present, a trio of people seated around the table before Vance. On his right were Peter Reiff and Dan Andrews. Both in the same age bracket as Vance, they had all started around the same time together.

  These two had been brought in by him personally upon ascending to the Special Director seat.

  With brown hair and olive skin, Reiff still held the ability to catch the stray glance from a passing female. A fact he was quite proud of, his suit was cut to enhance the effect.

  Beside him, Andrews was different in every way, his extra weight causing him to sweat profusely. Taken together, his suit had been reduced to a rumpled mess, his thinning hair plastered to his head.

  On the opposite side of the table was Hannah Rowe, a woman several years their senior. In her early fifties, already her hair was trending toward silver, lines framing her eyes and lips.

  Vance might have had to appoint a few females when taking his new position to keep the powers that be in Human Resources happy, but that didn’t mean he had to bring on someone that would be a distraction.

  Or a temptation.

  “Who do we have on the ground there?” Andrews asked.

  Vance glanced down to the printout before him, but was cut short by Rowe getting there first.

  “Ramirez,” she said. Nothing more.

  Cocking his head back a few inches, Andrews looked to Reiff in his periphery. “Ramirez. Which one is he again?”

  Again, Vance began to respond.

  Again, he was cut short, the pattern fast growing to become an annoyance.

  “She is Manuela Ramirez from Miami,” Rowe said. “Thirty-one years old, she is posing as a local graduate student.”

  “Oh, right,” Andrews said, pretending to understand completely.

  It was clear from his tone and his expression that he didn’t.

  “She has joined up with a group calling themselves Libertate Loco,” Vance added. “Just another nameless faceless young adult getting swept up in the movement.”

  There was plenty more he wanted to add. Comments about young people, about political movements, even about females in general. After a year in his post, forced behavior was finally starting to become habit.

  He bit his tongue.

  “Probably in the cheap seats,” Reiff said. “Might be tough to get much of a view of things.”

  “Which is why we have a backup in position,” Rowe said. Her tone indicated no small amount of disdain, as if she didn’t like being challenged. “John Farkus is there as well. He will be looking on from seats with a high vantage point.”

  “Basically,” Vance said, fast growing weary of the conversation, “she’s our ears and he’s our eyes.” Lifting his chin a few inches toward the tech in the corner he said, “Speaking of which, how we coming over there? This thing is set to go live in just a few minutes.”

  If the disjointed feed they were receiving was all that came through, they would make do. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d had to deal with such things.

  These were third world countries, after all.

  At the same time, if he could survive the ordeal without getting motion sickness, that would be a good thing as well.

  Raising a single finger behind him, the tech said nothing. From his stool, all that was visible was his back, a thin trail of brown hair streaming down from the base of his skull.

  If Vance had his way, removing the ponytail would have been a condition of hiring. Just like in the good old days, every male would wear their hair high and tight, as he did.

  Ponytails would be the only accepted look for females.

  Like a great many things, though, Vance had learned to loosen his grip on accepted norms over the years. Trying to classify someone by their haircut simply wasn’t acceptable any longer.

  The eyebrow ring the young man wore was a different story entirely, something he was fast trying to reach a solution on.

  The thought rested at the front of his mind as the tech whirled around. Lifting his feet from the floor, he used the swivel chair to turn back and face them.

  A satisfied look was on his features.

  “All clear, we are a go.”

  Chapter Three

  Normally the spot would be reserved for the home goal. It would have a metal structure stretched ten yards wide across it, a net draped over it. A series of lines would be scrawled on the grass, demarcating the end line and goalie box.

  Bouncing around in front of it would be a long and wiry man with padded gloves, ready to keep any opposition at bay.

  Tonight, the space was covered with an impromptu stage. Screwed together with 4x4’s and sheets of plywood, it stood five feet off the ground. Ten yards on either edge, a red carpet covered the top surface. A skirt
of yellow, red, and blue – the Venezuelan flag colors – was wrapped around the outside of it.

  Beefy men in dark suits were spaced every few feet around it, patrolling the empty piece of grass that separated the stage from the crowd outside.

  In the center of the stage was a single podium, a pair of microphones extended straight up from it. On the corners sat banks of speakers more than three feet in height.

  A single barren flagpole rested beside the podium.

  Just a few steps from the staircase leading up to the stage stood Edgar Belmonte. Tucked into the corner of the stadium, the angle was poor for seeing the full expanse of the crowd on the field, though he had a clear view of the bleachers rising tall on every side.

  Exactly as he and Ramon had discussed earlier, the sixteen minutes had been more than enough to fill in any remaining holes.

  Not a single empty seat could be seen, the assemblage lit up by the powerful banks of lights lining the top of the stadium.

  It was perfect.

  “You sure about this?” Giselle Ruiz asked. Standing just a few inches from his shoulder, she had to practically yell to be heard.

  On their previous campaign visits, they had approached events as if they were concerts. They had asked someone to serve as a master of ceremonies for the evening. That person had been in charge of keeping the crowd excited, whetting their appetite until Belmonte took the stage.

  A few times, they had even used opening acts. Local officials or influential people from the party, anybody that could lend a kind word and a bit of credibility to the proceedings.

  Tonight, such an approach had been abandoned.

  There would be no sharing the stage. No asking the crowd’s excitement to ebb and crest over the course of many hours.

  This evening was about Belmonte. Everything before had been prelude, building name recognition.

  “Absolutely,” Belmonte replied. Tucking his chin to his shoulder, he asked, “Do you have it?”

  Ruiz kept her gaze out to the crowd, a collective buzz seeming to well up from the throng of people before them. Extending one arm his direction, she passed a simple plastic sack into his hand.

  There was no outward reaction from Belmonte as he accepted it. There wasn’t even the need to open the top and inspect the contents.

  He already knew exactly what was there. Two simple items, both procured the day before, carbon copies to the ones they had used for a practice run that very afternoon.

  “Buena suerte,” Ruiz said, just barely loud enough to be heard.

  Belmonte didn’t bother to respond. They were well past the point of believing in luck. Instead, he pulled back the cuff of his dress shirt and checked his watch.

  It was time.

  About the Author

  Dustin Stevens is the author of more than 30 novels, 22 of them having become #1 Amazon bestsellers, including the Reed & Billie and Hawk Tate series. The Boat Man, the first release in the best-selling Reed & Billie series, was named the 2016 Indie Award winner for E-Book fiction. The freestanding work The Debt was named an Independent Author Network action/adventure novel of the year for 2017.

  He also writes thrillers and assorted other stories under the pseudonym T.R. Kohler, including The Ring, Shoot to Wound, and Peeping Thoms.

  A member of the Mystery Writers of America and Thriller Writers International, he resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.