The Outside Man

by Don Bentley

  With that, Frodo climbed to his feet and began an awkward shuffle toward the steps leading to his master bedroom on the condo’s second story. In a blur of fur, Seamus was at his owner’s side, just when Frodo needed something to lean against as he mounted the first stair.

  It occurred to me, as my friend and his dog disappeared from view, that Frodo’s life would have been much easier if he’d switched bedrooms to the ground floor. But he hadn’t. Men like Frodo never took the easy way out.

  Neither would I.

  NINE

  Who in the hell is this?”

  The question, as obnoxious as it was, wasn’t the worst part of the encounter. That distinction rested with the questioner himself. DIA Branch Chief James Glass was an ex–Army Special Forces team sergeant and current night terror to Islamic jihadis everywhere. He also happened to be my boss.

  Or former boss. These distinctions were lost on James.

  “Come on, Chief,” Frodo said, looking a little like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “This is Matty.”

  “Matty who?” James said, a red flush creeping up his tree trunk of a neck. “I don’t know any Matty. I used to know a shit-hot case officer named Matt Drake, but he was a fucking quitter, and I hate quitters. That man is dead to me. Do you hear me? Dead!”

  James stabbed his desk with his index finger as he yelled dead, and I had to fight back a smile. Don’t get me wrong. James’s rage was legendary. Before a Taliban RPG had taken his right eye and ended his operational career, he’d put more men in the dirt than cancer. But at this moment, he looked strikingly like Robert De Niro doing Al Capone in The Untouchables.

  I want him dead. I want his family dead. I want to piss on his ashes.

  “Why the fuck are you laughing?” James said. His single eye zeroed in on me like a howitzer’s barrel.

  Maybe I should have fought that smile a little harder.

  “You like Kevin Costner, Chief?” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Oh shit,” Frodo said. “Tell me you did not just go there.”

  “Go where?” James said, looking from Frodo to me and back again, his close-cropped head swiveling like a tank’s turret.

  “Come on, Chief,” I said, “you telling me you weren’t doing a De Niro impression?”

  “This is funny?” James said, the flush reaching his cauliflower ears, deformed from decades of Army combatives training. “Is that what you think?”

  “No,” I said, finally losing my patience, “I think this is pitiful. A team of shooters made a run on me yesterday in broad daylight. I’m pretty sure they’re connected to my last mission in Syria. A mission I undertook at your request. Yes, I told you I wanted out, but things have changed. I want back in. Can we dispense with this bullshit and get down to fucking business?”

  The frustration building over the last twenty-four hours caught up to me, and the second half of my answer came out a little stronger than intended. Okay, a lot stronger. I was leaning over James’s desk, eyeball to eyeball with a man who’d spent eighteen years sending terrorists on one-way trips to paradise.

  “Everything all right in here?”

  The question came from behind me, but I would have known the voice anywhere. Ann Beaumont, James’s long-suffering executive assistant, had just peeked in the open door. At the sound of her Southern drawl, the testosterone-laced tension drained from the room.

  “Just peachy,” James said with a grin. “Matty’s back.”

  * * *

  —

  Use a coaster,” James said as he passed me a beer.

  Technically, alcohol was forbidden in this, the inner sanctum of DIA headquarters, but James didn’t stand much for technicalities. He might have been only a Branch Chief, but James Glass swung a big operational stick. More than that, he had the president’s ear. The bureaucratic rules that governed this agency were written for mere mortals, which James had ceased being about the time he’d pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole. SEAL Team Six might have been the ones to kill bin Laden, but that was only because James and his team had been weathered in. The aviators who had refused to fly James that night still lived in fear.

  To be fair, even Mother Nature was expected to blink in a contest of wills with James. I half believed that if the Chinook pilots had just taken off, the clouds would have cleared, and the winds calmed. James might not walk on water, but he came awfully close.

  I dutifully selected a coaster from the dispenser located in the center of the spotless conference table and studied the image. An aerial view of a car engulfed in flames, undoubtedly taken by a loitering UAV.

  “Who was this?” I said, holding the coaster.

  “Zarqawi,” James said without missing a beat.

  “You added UAV kills to the list?”

  James gave me a flat stare, the black eye patch covering one eye adding menace to his already formidable expression. “Zarqawi wasn’t killed by a UAV. You can’t believe everything you read, Matty.”

  I chuckled as I set the coaster down and placed my beer on top. In an organization that was becoming more bureaucratic by the day, James made it his mission to remind the analysts laboring in sterile cubicles that the real world was full of blood and tears. He wanted to ensure they never forgot that the life of a covert operative half a world away might depend on the quality of their work product.

  In an earlier time, James might have driven his message home by wearing a necklace of ears. In today’s quieter, gentler DIA, he compromised by keeping a collection of coasters imprinted with the after-action imagery of missions in which he’d had a hand. The stack loomed larger each time I visited his inner sanctum.

  “Enough ass grabbing,” James said once Frodo was seated. “What have you got, Matthew?”

  That was the million-dollar question. I’d been working on an answer for the last twenty-four hours but still didn’t feel any closer. “I’m not sure,” I said, ordering my thoughts, “but I think the team of shooters is somehow connected to the ISIS splinter cell we took apart in Syria.”

  “Why?” James said.

  “The shooter who went after me looked like a younger version of Sayid.”

  “His son?” James said.

  I nodded. “The age would be about right.”

  “What about the rest of the team?” Frodo said. “They Middle Eastern too?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but something about them felt off.”

  “What’s that mean?” James said.

  “It means they didn’t act like jihadis. Their movements were disciplined, their fire controlled. It felt like I was fighting fellow commandos.”

  My conclusion sounded incredibly weak, but James and Frodo shared a look as soon as the words left my mouth. I was onto something.

  “What?” I said, looking from my boss to my best friend.

  “Show him the tape,” James commanded.

  As ordered, Frodo grabbed a remote and brought the floor-to-ceiling screen that covered the far wall to life. Many DIA bureaucrats had the small flat-screens in their offices perpetually tuned to MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News, depending on their political affiliation.

  Not James.

  In the odd instance when his screen was tuned to programming, James had it pegged on Al Jazeera, usually with the sound up loud and the subtitles on so he could practice his Arabic. But that was only once in a blue moon. More often than not, James’s TV was tuned to his own version of the news—UAV feeds.

  The screen came to life, but for once, I wasn’t looking down the aiming reticle of a Sentinel ghosting through Iranian airspace or a Reaper about to turn a Toyota Hilux into spare parts. This time, the quality of the footage was poor, probably because a team of analysts had lifted it from a security camera’s feed. It was also familiar. Not because I’d seen the video before, but because I recognized the man in the middle
of the frame.

  Me.

  “What the fuck, boss?” I said, pointing at the screen.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad, Matthew,” James said, not even having the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t find out it was you until last night.”

  “How?”

  This time James did register a reaction. But it was more annoyance than embarrassment. “Nothing you need to worry about. I—”

  “How?” I said again.

  “He’s got you tagged as a Foxtrot Charlie One,” Frodo said.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said.

  “Get off your high horse,” James said. “Did I illegally make you a target of national surveillance? Yes, and this is why.” James gestured toward the screen with one of his ham-sized hands. “You might have been on the bench, pretending to be a civilian for the last four months, but pretending was all it was. I hate to break it to you, Matthew, but former Iraqi commandos don’t fly halfway across the world to target civilians.”

  “What?” I said, not bothering to mask the confusion in my voice.

  “Come on, son,” James said, “get your head back in the game.”

  “He was almost there on his own, Chief,” Frodo said.

  “Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Besides, the clock is ticking. I don’t have time for this old son to get there on his own. Roll the tape, Frodo.”

  On the screen, the ambush was unfolding in real time. Me tussling with the momma bear. The gunfight with my would-be assassin. Me emptying the Glock through his windshield.

  “Nice work there, Matty,” James said as he reached beneath his desk for a tin of Copenhagen, then slapped it between his fingers as if with a rattlesnake’s quivering tail. “This is where your new friends make an entrance.”

  On the screen, the backup team arrived in two dark-colored SUVs. Once again, the shooters broke out in two teams of two, one team bounding forward while the second laid down suppressive fire.

  “Those are our tactics—,” I said.

  “Because US Special Forces trained them,” Frodo said.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on that,” I said.

  “To be fair, you were trying not to get your ass shot off,” Frodo said.

  “Bullshit,” James said, and thumbed a fist-sized wad of dip between his lip and his gum. “Any jackass can survive an ambush. You guys get paid to think.”

  “I was on vacation,” I said, watching the action unfold. The American influence was easy enough to spot now that I wasn’t concentrating on just staying alive. But learning that my attackers were Iraqi didn’t bring me clarity. If anything, this revelation made things only more confusing. “So is anybody going to tell me why Sayid’s son was linked up with an Iraqi hit team? Or better yet, why they decided to turn the streets of Austin into a shooting gallery?”

  “Or why they were targeting you?” Frodo suggested.

  “I figured the answer to the first two questions would probably point me in the right direction,” I said.

  “And you would be wrong,” James said, pulling a foam cup from his drawer.

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” I said.

  “Okay, smart guy,” James said, “here’s what we know. The jihadi was probably related to the Syrian you waxed.”

  “Probably?”

  “As you’re well aware, we don’t have a body,” James said, and sent a stream of brown tobacco juice into the white cup. “In fact, you might say that the Iraqi shooters went to extraordinary lengths to retrieve the jihadi—a guy they had to know was already dead. Why?”

  “Because they didn’t want us to get his DNA,” I said, watching as one of the shooters tossed an incendiary grenade into the car’s backseat.

  “Ding, ding,” James said, “we have a winner. So to cover their tracks, the team exfils the dead body and torches his car. But not all is lost. The scientists working artificial intelligence over at DARPA have made some amazing progress during the last year or so. Shit that would make your head spin.”

  “Like why nobody in this organization has the balls to fire you?” I said.

  “Focus, dipshit,” James said. “We’re talking about artificial intelligence. Algorithms. The dirty web.”

  “Dark web, boss,” Frodo said. “The dirty web is something else.”

  As always, Frodo delivered his jab completely deadpan. And as always, James paused for a second. His famous one-eyed stare locked on his obnoxious subordinate as James pondered whether Frodo was truly trying to help him or just jerking his chain. This time, I was the one who rescued my ex-bodyguard.

  “You were saying?” I said.

  “I was saying that I should have traded the two of you to the CIA a long time ago. A DARPA program manager just rolled out a new version of facial-recognition software. Instead of just identifying someone, it can also determine familial relationships between photographs.”

  “Like whether the dead jihadi has his dad’s smile?” I said.

  “Nobody likes a wiseass,” James said. “Frodo?”

  Frodo touched a button on the remote, and the screen changed. This time, the footage from the ambush was replaced with a series of close-ups of my would-be murderer. The images must have come from several different cameras, but the minions down in data science had done fine work.

  A succession of yellow circles appeared over various aspects of the jihadi’s face before materializing on a second face to the right of the jihadi’s head shots. Sayid. The man who had led the ambush that had crippled Frodo. A man I had beaten to death in a rathole of a Syrian prison moments before a team of Delta Force commandos saved my bacon.

  “So . . . what?” I said, staring at the spiderweb of lines joining the two pictures together. “I killed Dad and now junior decides to settle the score? That doesn’t explain the Iraqi shooters.”

  “No, it does not,” James said. “It also doesn’t explain why they came for you in broad daylight.”

  I looked at James in silence, dumbfounded. My boss was exactly right. I was not an assassin, but I’d hit a high-value target a time or two. Those operations were always executed at the time and place most advantageous to the assaulters. I could think of a million locations more suitable to put me down than the streets of Austin. Why hadn’t the assassins triggered somewhere more discreet? Somewhere more advantageous to them?

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” Frodo said, spinning the TV remote on the polished table. “Those guys were professionals. They must’ve had a reason, and I can think of just one.”

  “They wanted to make a statement,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Frodo said.

  “Why?” James said.

  “That’s the question,” I said. “I don’t know the answer. But I do know where to start digging.”

  “What do you mean?” Frodo said.

  “The man who was Sayid’s handler in Syria works on the other side of the Potomac,” I said. “It’s time I paid him a visit.”

  TEN

  You want to do what?” James said at the same time Frodo blurted, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  Frodo and James never agreed about anything. I must have been onto something.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Didn’t he take out a restraining order?” Frodo said.

  “That was just a misunderstanding,” I said, waving away my friend’s concerns.

  “You broke his nose,” Frodo said.

  “Po-tae-to, po-ta-to,” I said. “How are his confirmation hearings going?”

  “Haven’t started yet,” James said. “You’re not watching?”

  “I told you,” I said, “I’m retired.”

  “Was retired,” Frodo said.

  “Semantics,” I said. “You think he’ll be confirmed?�
�

  “Without a doubt,” James said. “Regardless of what happened in Syria, the president’s senior adviser has his back.”

  “By what happened in Syria, are you referring to the time Frodo and I almost died because the Chief of Base, Charles Sinclair Robinson the Fourth, left our asses hanging in the breeze?”

  “Semantics,” James said. “Look, everyone knows some hinky shit went down in Syria, and that Sayid, and by extension Charles, was at the center of it. That said, you weren’t exactly here to press your case over the last twelve months. For the most part, all that’s blown over.”

  “Doesn’t feel that way to me,” I said, pointing to the image of the dead assassin linked by yellow lines to his equally dead father. “What else have we got on the dead shooter or the commandos? Anything?”

  Frodo and James looked at each other before turning their gazes back to me.

  “Nope,” James said.

  “Well, then, it looks like I need to make an appointment to see the future Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” I said, getting to my feet.

  “Matty,” James said, “one thing.”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “If you come at the king, you best not miss.”

  ELEVEN

  Your face is looking better,” I said, sliding into the empty seat across from the once and future king. “The bruising’s barely noticeable.”

  Charles had been reading from his phone and hadn’t noticed my approach. Still, if my unexpected appearance upset him, he didn’t show it.

  “Matt, good to see you,” Charles said, putting the phone into his pocket.

  Charles came from old money, and he looked the part—tall and trim with wavy black hair, a square jaw, and perfect teeth. A regular blue-blood aristocrat. His suit had never graced a store rack, and a TAG Heuer aviator watch dominated his left wrist. It wasn’t enough to Charles that he was loaded. He wanted everyone else to know it too.

  “Nightmares still keeping you up?” Charles said. “Or is it just the shakes? Word on the street is that you piss yourself. I’d hate for that to be true.”