Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization

by Gavin G. Smith

  Jameson just laughed.

  “Nobody actually gives a shit about that as long as no important base demographic is getting their neighborhood shot up. The war gives people the excuse to buy guns, and to look down on Mexicans. The politicians want something they can shout about whilst coming up with unworkable solutions to distract people from domestic issues. Meanwhile twenty percent of the population wants to snort, smoke, inject, or otherwise imbibe what the cartels have to offer. We call that supply and demand, to stand in the way of that is downright unpatriotic. Don’t you love your country?”

  “Erm, I’m not American,” Harting told him, more than a little confused by the turn in the conversation.

  “Then why in the hell am I talking to you?” Jameson asked.

  “Because I’m with—” Harting started.

  “My problem is that the Mexican drug trade takes an estimated thirty-one billion in good ole’ fashioned US dollars out of the economy every year. Poof!” He made an exploding gesture with his hands. “Gone, just like that. Money that could be taxed, help pay into bullshit slush funds like the one that finances your nonsense.”

  “I’ve had enough of this—” Dalton pushed himself off the wall.

  Jameson whipped round in his seat and the sunglasses came off. His eyes were cold and nearly colorless.

  “How the hell you got the balls to talk to me, son? We live in a small community. You left a lot of men to burn. Some of them were my friends.”

  Dalton was suddenly still and quiet, his face like stone. Even now Harting wasn’t sure if the ex-SEAL felt the slightest guilt for what he’d done in Afghanistan. In some ways it was what made him so useful. This revelation, however, meant that they were dealing with an ex-covert operator rather than an operations man with vision. It was clear that Jameson wasn’t going to understand what Harting was offering. This had been a waste of time. He would need to go above this man’s head, have him removed if he could. Still, his masters would not be pleased that he had not gotten the account.

  Jameson turned back to face Harting.

  “In order for my problem to have a solution I either need something in excess of six hundred and fifty thousand Americans to suddenly display a great deal more self-control that they have been hitherto, someone to bottle the cure for addiction, or for all drugs to be legalized, regulated and taxed.”

  Harting was just staring at him.

  “Complex problems,” Jameson continued. “And see, I don’t have the luxury of assuming that all Mexicans are superstitious fools who’ll swallow some arrogant Ivy League asshole’s programmed version of who or what a Mexican is. Because we and our brothers and sisters in the other federal agencies working down here have to deal with reality rather than prejudices.”

  “I assure you—”

  “You can’t assure me of shit because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your superiors—” Harting started. He’d gone through embarrassment, humiliation and was now well and truly angry.

  “Are smart enough to let the man on the ground make the operational decisions. What you’ve done is used a lot of fancy words to say that you want to turn this country into a bulletfest, like that nonsense in Budapest. How will that help me with my problem?”

  “You lack the vision for something like this. We have proof of concept. This is the future of black ops.”

  “This isn’t even the future of shooting a lot of people, because that’s all you’ve brought to this table. You probably think I’m some kind of luddite, right?”

  “Your word, not mine,” Harting growled, though it was probably the only thing they were going to agree on.

  “Let me see if I can explain it to you.” He nodded down at Harting’s own prosthetic. “Pretty fancy bit of kit, need much looking after?” The doctor assumed that the question was rhetorical. “See when I was as green around the gills as this asshole here,” Jameson pointed at a still bristling Dalton, “I was doing some work overseas—”

  Harting had had enough. His face burning, he stood up.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jameson, but we’re busy people and I’m afraid we just don’t have time for what I’m sure would be a charmingly folksy tale of daring-do.” He picked up the file and slid it into the briefcase.

  “Sit your ass down, right now,” Jameson growled. This time both Tibbs and Dalton came off the wall, hands moving toward weapons. If Jameson was armed he made no move himself. Harting knew that for all the man’s bluster, he held the power of life or death over Jameson. For all his backward thinking it was clear that the CIA station chief was not a stupid man, he must have realized the same thing, yet he showed no fear whatsoever. Instead, he was leaning back casually in his chair. Harting knew that there would be ramifications if he killed Jameson, however, and he was slightly worried that if he didn’t do as he was told then the station chief would do something stupid and force them to kill him.

  Very slowly Harting sat back down, his prosthetic hand gripping the metal of the table.

  “So, I was doing this thing overseas. I had all the toys, some fancy rifle with all sorts of scopes and lasers. Except the environment wasn’t terribly forgiving for tech. It let me down when the shit really hit the fan, and I had to throw it. I ended up with a stolen AK-47, and my daddy’s old 1911. Now those ole’ AKs have got a lot of problems but say what you like, when it mattered it kept shooting, even when Daddy’s 1911 had jammed up. Now it’s been a while since I was that kind of operational, but know what I started taking out in the field after that?”

  “No,” Harting said, forcing himself to play along and desperately looking forward to the end of this meeting.

  “An M14,” Jameson told him.

  Harting was aware of Tibbs nodding approvingly. The doctor looked at the ex-Delta sniper askance.

  “An old rifle,” Tibbs told him. In retrospect Harting decided he probably could have worked that out himself.

  “Damn straight,” Jameson said, lounging back in the chair.

  “We offer full logistical support—” Harting started, though he wasn’t even sure why he was bothering. It was like talking to Cro-Magnon man.

  “Don’t you think someone would notice that logistical support in a tight-knit community? Also it sounds a lot more expensive than bribing a disgruntled Sicario. Look, you don’t understand this world, and if Budapest is anything to go by you never will. Don’t come back here until I’ve been replaced and even then you’d better hope my replacement’s a fool.”

  Harting just stared at him. He was peripherally aware that he had crushed part of the metal tabletop in sheer frustration.

  “We’re done here,” Jameson told him and nodded toward the door. Harting used it.

  CHAPTER 20

  The morning sun crept into the hotel room. Garrison woke with a start. He rolled over. Gina was gone. A moment of irrational panic, of displaced operational paranoia, and he was on his feet, searching the room, until he found the note scrawled on the back of a receipt: Went to get us breakfast, back soon.

  * * *

  Shaving, Garrison decided, was one of the pillars of civilized existence. He froze as he heard the noise from the other room. Just a click. So quiet he wasn’t sure he’d even heard it.

  “Gina...?” he called but there was something furtive about the noise, something not Gina about it, even if she had been trying to be quiet, trying not to wake him.

  His eyes flicked to the left and he reached for the shaving mirror, angling it so he could look through the steam to the open bathroom door and out into the hotel room.

  Movement. The sound of suppressed weapon fire but it sounded wrong. Not bullets. The volley of tranquiliser darts smashed the mirror, fragmenting Garrison’s reflection, but he was already moving.

  * * *

  Garrison squeezed the throat of the first gunman in a death grip. When the second gunman rushed into the bathroom Garrison threw himself back, dragging the first gunman with him, and slamming into the second. Ba
ttering him into the tiled wall of the bathroom, pinning him there. Garrison relished the fear in the first gunman’s eyes, the realization that he’d walked into the wrong room, a room with a feral animal in it, even as the life was being squeezed out of him. Garrison’s own face was a mask of pitiless fury at this violation. Both of the gunmen were firing wild, tranq darts going everywhere but into Garrison’s flesh. He threw an elbow back and heard a grunt of pain. Pushed the first gunman back by his throat, hopefully hard enough to damage his windpipe, and then he was grabbing the darts and stabbing them into his two attackers before they could recover. He did this until the first gunman fell over. The second he flung to the floor, smashing the toilet on the way down.

  He wanted to kill them, needed to kill them as a tactical requirement, he didn’t want to leave them behind him. Looking down on them he knew so many ways to do so. One thought battered its way through the focused, disciplined rage, however: Gina!

  He started running.

  * * *

  Garrison sprinted through a corridor toward the hotel’s reception area and slammed into a bearded, solidly built man, knocking him to the floor. He ignored the man, stopping just for a second to look around. No Gina. He continued toward the reception area.

  His steps faltered. His vision blurred. His legs went from under him and he was on his knees.

  “Mate, you alright?” An accent, European, possibly Eastern European, he wasn’t sure.

  Garrison slumped backward and found himself staring at the ceiling. Someone was leaning over him. The man he’d knocked over, his colorful shirt and hat just screamed tourist. His cold blue eyes suggested something different. It took a moment for Garrison to work out what the object in the man’s hand was. An auto injector. Then the world went away.

  CHAPTER 21

  KT finished dropping the few pieces of clothing and even fewer personal items that Bloodshot had managed to gather this time round into a carryall. One last look about and she saw the coin lying on the table. It was the ship’s coin that she’d given him. She sat on the edge of the bed, picked the coin up, and traced the edge of the coin with her fingertips. Her story wasn’t a lie. The coin had meant something once. So had her integrity, and that overused but little understood word: honor. Now the coin was just a prop. It was just another way to manipulate Bloodshot, to get him to do Harting and his masters’ bidding.

  KT made a fist around the coin.

  CHAPTER 22

  Harting and Dalton watched Bloodshot thrash around in his pod on the large central monitor in the medical hub. A dead man having a nightmare, forced to live the worst part of a false life again and again.

  Harting glanced toward Eric; at least this time the tech was paying attention.

  “I love this part,” Dalton said. “Look at him, he even dreams stupid.”

  Harting suppressed his irritation. He was still angry after his trip to Mexico City. The station chief had made his recommendation and his superiors had decided to follow it. Harting’s own superiors were less than pleased.

  “He’s almost at the end,” the doctor said. “KT’s up next.” He just hoped she played her part properly. They were speeding up the cycle because they had found Baris.

  “How’d you find Baris?” Dalton asked.

  Harting opened his mouth but it was Eric who answered.

  “Axe called his cell while the big guy was doing what he does,” the tech told the ex-SEAL.

  Harting knew that Dalton didn’t like it when people referred to Bloodshot as “the big guy.” In the ex-SEAL’s mind he was the big guy, Chainsaw’s Alpha Dog. Harting knew he hated playing second fiddle to Bloodshot, working as part of his clean-up crew.

  “Amateur hour,” Dalton muttered.

  Beneath them the banks of machinery hissed, flooding coolant into Bloodshot’s body, bringing down the temperature, trying to normalize the biometrics.

  “What story should I use this time?” Harting asked the room. “Stick with tennis?” He pointed at Eric. “Cricket?”

  Eric glanced over at his boss.

  “Dude, I’m from Jersey. But, if you’re asking I have some script thoughts,” the tech told him.

  Harting knew he shouldn’t joke with them. It encouraged informality, which in turn eroded respect and resulted in subordinates addressing him as “dude.”

  “I’ll pass,” Harting told the tech.

  “Seriously?” Eric asked.

  Harting sighed and not for the first time considered how he had brought this on himself.

  “You’ve already stolen every movie cliché there is. I think a dancing lunatic in a slaughterhouse and ‘Psycho Killer’ is plenty. No more ideas from you,” he told the tech. He was aware of Dalton watching the exchange, amused. The design committee for the memory implants had been a bad idea, he should have just done it himself, but fictional revenge scenarios weren’t really his forte. Eric, however, had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of some of the more lurid parts of popular culture. Tibbs had seen some things, and Dalton was a badly enough damaged individual to contribute from his own disturbed imagination. Harting felt that many of their suggestions were not terribly realistic but the scenario they had concocted seemed to do the job. That said, realistic or not, to all intents and purposes as far as Bloodshot was concerned he had experienced the kidnapping and subsequent murder of his wife. It was as “real” as it could get. Harting was just pleased he hadn’t gone with Eric’s “fed to wild pigs” idea.

  “Are you kidding, that shit’s dope,” Eric told him. Harting almost missed Eric mutter the word “asshole” under his breath. Then KT walked into the hub. The doctor mentally added it to the list of things he would have to deal with later, filed under “attitude adjustment,” as he handed KT a clipboard. She took the proffered clipboard but Harting didn’t let go. Instead he pulled her toward him using the strength of his prosthetic arm.

  “Remember what we talked about,” he hissed at her before leaving the hub. Dalton followed him out like the obedient guard dog he was.

  “What’d you guys talk about?” Eric enquired after the door had hissed shut behind Harting and Dalton.

  “None of your business,” KT told him, not even bothering to hide her distaste.

  “Everybody knows,” Eric told her. He figured that if she didn’t like him at least he could make her uncomfortable, but she was already halfway out the door.

  “You know what else everybody knows?” she threw over her shoulder. “Six inches is not a lot.” The door shut behind her.

  “It’s not?” Eric wondered, suddenly forced to reconsider his whole worldview. He was so lost in thought considering this new revelation that he didn’t even notice Sarah, his fellow tech, trying not to laugh at him.

  CHAPTER 23

  KT had to stop in the doorway to the resurrection room and take a deep breath. This was not what she had trained for. This wasn’t why she had pushed so hard, driven her body to the limit time and time again. She had wanted to rescue people from the sea, save lives in the most extreme situations. Now she was a bit player in Harting’s tailor-made psychological drama.

  More than anything she had come to hate the resurrection room. The concrete walls, the institutional strip lighting, the blood-sucking machines and the neo-medieval torture implements that were the table of knives and the robotic arm with its needles. She had to force herself to enter the room when Bloodshot’s eyes flickered open.

  “Where...?” Bloodshot managed.

  She thought of him by his project name. It was easier than thinking of him as Ray Garrison, a real person who’d had a life. Bloodshot was a thing, a tool, a machine. It was alright to program a machine. Except this no longer convinced her, it hadn’t in a long time.

  He pushed himself up on the bed.

  “Easy, just breathe...” she told him, just like she had so many times before. Doing as she was told so that RST didn’t tear the breathing apparatus out of her neck and let her die, or, even worse, leave her in a hospital room hooked
up to machines for the rest of her life. He put his feet down on the cold floor and tried to stand, unsteadily. “You’re gonna fall,” she told him.

  Except he didn’t. He staggered a little but didn’t fall. She stared at him. It was ridiculous but somehow she was surprised that he had deviated from the script even this tiny bit, from Harting’s checklist that controlled both their lives.

  “It’s okay. You’re okay,” she told him. Perhaps the biggest lie. It wasn’t okay. He wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay, here.

  * * *

  Then they were into the script proper.

  Harting cut open Ray’s—Bloodshot’s hand and the nanites healed the wound. KT watched silently. Somehow Harting never seemed to tire of this. By now she would have expected him to be just going through the motions. Perhaps manipulating Bloodshot fed into his god complex. KT, on the other hand, did feel like she was going through the motions. Sometimes she wondered how Bloodshot didn’t notice this. It felt so obvious, like she had the word liar written across her face.

  * * *

  Harting watched the feed from the concealed cameras in Bloodshot’s room as his puppet woke from his designer nightmare with shadowy visions of his next target. The doctor had drip-fed him false memories so he would kill who they wanted him to. Harting nodded in KT’s direction so she could go and get ready to perform in the pool when she would “bump into” Bloodshot as he was working out.

  * * *

  Once KT would have derived satisfaction, even pleasure, from her underwater katas. Now she felt like a marionette with Harting roughly jerking her strings, making her dance.

  More than anything what was really getting to her was the bond she was forming with Bloodshot, something that transcended the erasing of his memories. She didn’t necessarily think it was attraction. More likely a mutual siege mentality as the only two borderline reasonable and approachable people who existed in this little world Harting had built for himself.

  She had met operators before, and Bloodshot had that swagger, and had arguably earned it, but underneath the programmed revenge she could tell he wanted to be a good man. Despite herself she could understand what Gina Garrison had seen in him. What galled her so much was that Harting knew of this bond. He was not a man very given to empathy but he was a trained observer and they were all part of his grand experiment. Nothing had been said but she knew he had seen the bond between them developing, and he had used it, exploited it. That hurt her the most, that something real became just another tool in a system of lies and oppression.