by S L Shelton
I helped him into the backseat before climbing in for the long, winding drive to John’s house in Leesburg, Virginia, some three hours away by highway. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take the highway…too many traffic cameras. We’d have to take the back roads, making it more of a five-hour trip.
“You’re burning up,” I said while looking into the rearview mirror. “Do I need to stop somewhere and get you some medicine?”
“No. Just get me to John,” he replied and then coughed, resulting in a muted moan.
“Belly wound?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Let me stop at a vet and get some antibiotics and some decent pain meds,” I offered.
“I’ve been on antibiotics all week,” he said after coughing through shaking his head. “I hit a farm store a while back. The broad-spectrum stuff should have knocked out anything. The bullet must have hit my bowel—I’ll need surgery to close it.”
“Sorry. I can’t help you there, pal,” I said. “Hopefully John will be able to find someone.”
I looked up at the mirror and watched him nod weakly.
“How about pain?” I asked after a moment.
“I’m fine,” he said, clearly lying.
I drove for several minutes, watching in the rearview as his head started tilting sideways.
“Hey!” I said.
“What?” he asked, jerking his head upright.
“You probably shouldn’t be sleeping,” I said in a softer tone. “Why don’t you tell me what made you call?”
“Still an annoying little fu—”
“I’m trying to keep you alive here, bud…work with me.”
“I didn’t know how much longer I could make it like this,” he said impatiently after a mild coughing fit. “I figured you’d be just about the only person in the know who wasn’t being watched.”
I laughed.
“Why is that funny?” he asked.
“Well, aside from the fact that I was confined to base at Peary, as soon as you disappeared, John hung me out as bait for whoever is after you.”
“What? Why in Christ’s name would he do that?”
“Well, they’ve already tried to get at me three times,” I said. I noticed his posture was much more alert.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said through a rattling hack that sounded as if he were about to lose a lung. “Why would they be after you?”
I looked back at him and smiled. “Apparently, you and I spent enough time alone in Burbank for me to absorb your evidence.”
“The account numbers,” Mark said.
“Yeah… Probably.”
“Did they do you any good?” he asked.
I looked back at him but didn’t answer.
“Come on,” he said dismissively. “I’m about to die. I’d like to know.”
“Geena Davis, The Long Kiss Goodnight, 1996,” I muttered, though his words weren’t an exact quote.
“Is that how you got the numbers?” he asked. “You’re a goddamned Rain Man?”
I just smiled.
“Tell me,” he said in a more serious tone. “You know, technically, I’m free. They were letting me go.”
“Technically, it was an exchange,” I said, looking at him in the mirror. “Your immunity in exchange for the investigation data and CI.”
“Yeah, well…I didn’t know they’d get to Black.”
I nodded and returned my attention to the road. I glanced down at the clock and saw it was after midnight. “Hey, Mark.”
“Yeah?”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, asshole,” he muttered and then after another few seconds, “Thanks for coming to get me.”
I smiled and saw he was doing the same in the rearview. It was good to see him again.
**
4:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 25th—Leesburg, Virginia
As we drove through Leesburg to the far end of town, I turned down the street that John’s house was on, one block off the main street. I saw his two-story Victorian as soon as I came around the corner. With its high, round corner turret and the pointed, alpine-like roof with the wide dormers in the attic, it looked like a dollhouse my sister used to have: a displaced relic from an age long gone. It would have seemed out of place anywhere else in my life, but sitting among the similar houses on the quiet back street of Leesburg, it blended in beautifully.
I heard Mark stir, sitting up in the backseat when the hairs went up on the back of my neck. I continued to drive past the house and instead continued on to the end of the block.
“You missed it,” Mark said before another coughing fit seized him.
“Just circling back,” I said, not wanting to alert him yet.
I went down to the next street and turned left, slowly and carefully looking for a place to stop. After turning left once more, I pulled into the driveway of a house with no cars—the residents most likely gone for the holiday.
“Hold tight,” I said as I put the car into park and turned off the engine before turning the switch off on the dome light.
“What’s wrong?” he asked raising his head higher to look out.
“Probably nothing,” I lied as I got out. The hairs on the back of my neck didn’t provide false alarms. “I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for a response, I quietly closed the door and walked along the sidewalk for a short ways; the hairs on my neck were still prickly with awareness. When I came up to the backside of the empty lot across from John’s house, my nose gave me the first sensory indication that I wasn’t alone in the night. The faint smell of human reached my brain, and I slowed my approach. There was little air movement in the night, but if I was smelling him, he was upwind…that was a good thing.
I stopped and bent low to search my surroundings before closing my eyes for a second. It might be hard for someone who hasn’t hunted to understand what goes on in a moment like that. The prey—or another predator—knows how to become invisible. But just as a boat creates a void in the water, an animal creates a void in the leaves, trees, and air around it.
I saw my void. With my eyes closed and my senses stretched out, he was laying in the dense brush across from John’s house. I stalked, painfully slow, toward him. In the still and quiet of a small town, the only thing harder than being invisible while doing surveillance was being invisible while stalking.
From down the street, I heard a car coming toward us. As it approached, I increased my speed. By the time the vehicle was passing in front of us, I saw the feet of my man.
The swish of the car rushing past us gave me my opening. I fell hard on his back, getting my first sense of what I was dealing with. The guy was big, and for a panicked moment, it occurred to me: This might be the giant we lost track of.
My knee brushed a holster on his hip as I descended on him. He turned quickly, bringing his elbow up toward my head. I raised my arm in defense of the strike, and as he flipped me over, I pulled the pistol from its holster. He was mid-strike with his rifle raised high when I pressed his own weapon to his cheek and pulled the hammer back.
“Oh, fuck,” he muttered, frozen in mid-blow.
Then recognition flashed in my mind.
“Seifert?” I asked. It was one of the SEALs I’d met in the Czech Republic: one of Lieutenant Marsh’s men.
“Monkey Wrench?”
I shook my head and lowered the stolen weapon. “Get off me, you big fucking swabby,” I muttered, throwing an epithet for sailors I had learned during one of my many military training courses.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed in a whisper.
I wasn’t sure how much information I should share with Seifert, especially since I hadn’t even told John I was coming or worse, that I had Mark Gaines with me.
“Cabin fever,” I muttered as I rolled to my side and stood.
He shook his head and clicked the thumb trigger open on his radio. “Momma, this is Majesty,” he said quietly. After a secon
d, I heard a faint click from Seifert’s earbud.
“You have a guest,” Seifert said. “Monkey Wrench is on his way in.”
Judging by the loudness of the muffled reply from Seifert’s earbud, I guessed John wasn’t pleased. He’d probably forgive me once he saw Mark, though, so I wasn’t worried.
“Tell him I’m driving around,” I said as I turned and began walking back to the car. “By the way,” I whispered over my shoulder. “You look good in civilian clothes. You should consider being a model.”
A small rock hit me in my back, signaling his reception of my suggestion.
When I got back to my stolen car, Mark was alert. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. “I just went to pet the guard dog.”
“Internal security?” he asked.
“SEAL,” I replied.
Mark nodded as I started the car and pulled out. A moment later, I was pulling up to the rear of John’s house, following his driveway around until the car wasn’t visible from the street. I noticed John’s face in the front window as we went past.
After parking, the back door opened to reveal a frowning John Temple. “What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed as he walked toward me, glaring. “We’ve had people out looking for you all night.”
I opened the rear door to my stolen car and revealed my prize. The dome light was still off, so John leaned forward to get a better look. When he realized who I had, his eyes popped wide.
I was certain I was about to be lavished with praise and apologies.
“Are you a fucking idiot? Bringing him here?” John rasped.
Not the response I had hoped for.
“Uh… Hello? I brought you Mark,” I replied, confused by the response. “You know…the guy you’ve been trying to get free for the last four months? The one you’ve been looking for since Sunday?”
“Mark, get out,” John said in a low voice.
When Mark moved, John got a glimpse of the bloody shirt he was wearing.
“It’s good to see you too,” Mark said softly with a weak smile. “Merry Christmas.”
“Shit,” John muttered. “Help me get him in.”
We slipped his arms around our shoulders and carried him in, careful to keep the noise down. Once inside, John laid him on the couch in a small den before pulling Mark’s jacket back to see the wounds.
It looked worse than I thought. Mark must have gone digging for the bullet at some point, because the wound was huge and swollen around the edges. When John lifted the dressing beneath, the smell made me draw back. Obviously, John had the same opinion, judging by the brief, startled expression that crossed his tired face.
“Jesus, Mark,” John muttered. “You’re burning up.”
“I’ve been on antibiotics all week,” he said after calming a coughing fit. “It must have nicked a bowel.”
“Shit,” John hissed as he stood and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Wait,” I said, handing him my own after bringing up the secure dialing application. “Mark seems to think we have to worry about company phones.”
John stared at my phone for a moment, obviously considering not only what I had just said, but also possibly doing a quick inventory of the calls he’d already made. He grabbed my phone from my hand as he tucked his own back into his pocket. After dialing a number, he turned his back on us and walked into the kitchen.
Mark looked up at me. “Thanks again,” he said.
I stared at his crooked nose—bent by the break I had caused back in Burbank. “I owed you at least that much,” I said finally.
“Ya think?” he muttered, grinning.
“I’ve got medical coming,” John said returning to the den after a moment. Then he looked at me. “That wasn’t too bright.”
“It was the best I could come up with,” I said with more bitterness than I had intended.
“Did it occur to you that by bringing him here, you were putting all three targets under one roof?” he asked.
What’s wrong with me? I mentally slapped myself. I know better than that!
“It actually had not occurred to me,” I said before turning to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Well, I’m going back to the Farm. You two have a good Christmas,” I replied.
“Stop it. You’re going to pout now?” John asked as I walked away.
I turned on my heel and glared at him. “You knew what was going on and didn’t tell me,” I said angrily. “You left me hanging like a slab of meat and didn’t even give me the courtesy of a warning.”
“I assumed you'd figure it out,” he said. “And look at that…I was right.”
“Fuck you, John,” I snapped. “I don’t have SEALs guarding my front door with sniper rifles.”
He drew back in surprise…no fear, but a bit of amusement.
“You do realize that you were on lockdown in a secure facility, surrounded by a military base and more trained operatives and CIA talent than any single place outside of Langley, right?” he said with a grin. “You were just about the most securely held witness we’ve ever had…until you went AWOL.”
I nodded angrily, biting the inside of my cheek. “I see,” I replied. “So I should have told Mark, ‘Sorry. You’ve got to call a cab. John wants me at the Farm.’”
“You could have had anyone go and get him,” John said, his anger beginning to surface for real.
“You know, I’m right here,” Mark said.
“Shut up,” both of us said at the same time.
“You’ve been feeding me this conspiracy data since I came on board,” I said accusingly. “I don’t know who to trust. I’m looking over my shoulder every minute of the day as it is, waiting for someone to put a bullet between my shoulder blades.”
“I warned you,” Mark said quietly.
“Shut up,” John and I both said at the same time.
“When Mark called and said he couldn’t call you because you had Agency hardware—” I got too frustrated to continue. “You know what? Never mind. I’m going back to Peary.”
I turned and marched toward the door, the anger still pumping blood into my cheeks and ears.
“Wait,” he said, catching up with me by the door. “You’re here now. You might as well catch a couple hours of shut eye and get some food in you.”
“What? With all three of us here and only Seifert out there to protect us?” I asked sarcastically as I opened the back door. “I'm going back to where I was safe so I can finish my training.”
“Will you two ladies please stop with your cat fight and get the hell in here so I can tell you what to look for before I die of blood poisoning?” Mark yelled, suddenly breaking us out of our belligerence at the cost of another coughing fit. “Jesus Christ! You’d think you two were an old married couple the way you carry on.”
John turned and walked back to Mark without another look at me. “What happened on the road?” he asked as he kneeled down next to the couch.
“They hit us hard,” Mark said after his coughing subsided. “They knew the route and the alternate route. They were waiting at the perfect spot to hit us.”
John nodded. “How many?” he asked.
“Maybe fifteen on the ambush, but there were more on their way in by the time I made it to the woods,” Mark replied. His face was pale as a sheet and his voice was getting quieter. “I can’t be sure, but it looked like the guy in charge was a goddamned giant…at least seven feet tall.”
John and I looked at each other. Mark noticed and asked, “Does that mean something?”
“In Syria, the guy who ambushed me and John in the alleyway was with a giant who was trying to get the Gori warheads,” I said as I walked over.
“The guy from Burbank?” Mark asked.
John nodded at him.
“So the same group running the Op to get the nukes is involved with the upstream money from these payoffs,” Mark said. “That is real bad news.”
“At least they didn’t get the nukes,” I muttered.
“There are lots of nukes out there,” John said. “These just looked like low-hanging fruit.”
“So now what?” I asked. “We hit a dead end on the giant with the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
Mark looked at me, his brow furrowed deeply. “DIA?”
“That’s not all,” John added. “Scott saw a white-haired German yelling at the FISA judge on your case.”
Mark’s eyes opened wide and anger flashed across his features. “Who is it?” he asked, rising up on his elbows.
“We don’t know,” John replied. “But we have an idea who we can ask.”
“Who?” Mark asked anxiously.
“Don’t worry about that for now,” John said, putting his hand on Mark’s shoulder. “We need to get you back on your feet before you can worry about any of that.”
“Just get me patched up and let me go,” Mark replied. “I’m a sitting duck in your custody.”
John nodded in agreement. “The German might just have been doing work for them,” he said, trying to head off any speculation. “Whoever they are.”
I looked at Mark with a raised eyebrow…an unspoken dare to get his ass patched up and go with me to find the German. The question in my face must have been clear because he shook his head.
John noticed my expression and turned on me. “You work for me,” he snapped. “This isn’t the Scott Wolfe show.”
I raised my eyebrow. “What?”
“What?!” John mocked me. “I know that look. I’m not stupid…and Mark is no condition to be out hunting spooks anyway. So that line of thought ends now.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied defensively.
“With Black dead, I’m going to have to assume the software I had on his system is gone…if he’d ever installed it to begin with,” Mark said, drawing attention back to him. “If DIA is covering for someone mixed up in this, I’d be looking for connections to the payoffs.”
“We have no way to check that until the accounts are penetrated,” John said. “And it may be months before we get any upstream connection, if at all.”
“They didn’t close the accounts down after you got the transaction numbers?” Mark asked.
