Game of Shadows

by R. J. Patterson

  “Then, please, get on with it,” Henry said.

  Elliott straightened his tie and continued. “This is a very straightforward question. What role did you play in the death of Guy Hirschbeck?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Blunt said as he snarled at Elliott. “This was billed as a hearing about transparency regarding the D.O.D., not an opportunity for partisan politicians to fling around scurrilous accusations without any basis. Please, Mr. Chairman, address this clown show or I’m going to show you how to filibuster a hearing. This is insane.”

  Henry held his hands up in the air. “Everyone, please settle—”

  “Based on your answer, I’m going to assume a big role,” Elliott said as he leaned forward and spoke into his mic, drowning out the chairman.

  “For the record, Mr. Freshman Congressman, I was saddened to hear about Senator Hirschbeck’s unfortunate murder. We often faced off on different sides of issues, but we were still cordial toward one another.”

  “Intentionally screwing up his last name is cordial? Good to know.”

  A murmur spread across the court.

  “I don’t know what political website you’ve been ingesting as if it’s the truth, but you need to simmer down because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “So, you didn’t direct anyone to kill Senator Hirschbeck, even though he threatened to expose your secret organization?”

  “You have quite the fanciful imagination, Mr. Elliott. In Texas, we have a saying: Always drink upstream from the herd. These questions are so ridiculous I’m starting to think you’re the kind of guy who’d drink downstream.”

  Elliott glared at Blunt. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Blunt leaned up to the mic and pursed his lips. “Listen very closely. No.”

  A man from the audience stood and pointed at Blunt, shouting. “Liar! Liar!”

  CHAPTER 26

  BLACK PUMPED HIS ARMS as he raced across the lawn toward the steps of the Capitol Building. Tour groups and congressional personnel milled around the entrance, unconcerned with a single man sprinting full speed toward the doors. Black’s lungs burned as he couldn’t get his legs to move fast enough to his liking. He flashed the CIA badge he’d been issued at the security guard before jumping ahead in line and scooting thought the metal detector without setting off any alarms.

  “Are you still with me?” Black asked Shields over the coms.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Just tell me what you need.”

  “What’s happening with the proceedings?”

  “It’s getting testy in there,” she said. “Elliott is really going after Blunt and throwing all kinds of accusations at him. Better hurry.”

  “Any sign of Antoine yet?”

  “Not yet, but I’m watching this on C-SPAN. It’s one stationary camera on the witness stand and the other is on the panel. There could be a thousand or two people in the room, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

  “Okay, I’m almost there.”

  While Black didn’t want to draw unwanted attention for racing through the hallowed halls of Congress, this wasn’t the moment to be worried about decorum. He flew past a pair of policeman and motioned for them to join him.

  “What’s the matter, sir?” one of the officers asked.

  “We’ve got a situation at the hearing,” Black shouted over his shoulder. “Please hurry.”

  The two men immediately followed Black and radioed in that there was a developing situation at the Elliott hearing.

  “Get moving,” Shields said over the coms. “It just got tense in there. I can’t see who, but somebody is shouting, and it sounds like Antoine.”

  “I’m almost there,” Black said. “And I’ve wrangled some Capitol Hill police too.”

  “I’ll let you know if anything changes,” she said.

  Black rounded the corner and charged toward the door. Shouting spilled into the hallway, and he recognized Antoine’s voice right away.

  “Liar! Liar!” Antoine said.

  Black put his hands in the air. “I apologize, Mr. Chairman, this is my uncle, and I just found out that he was off his meds. Please forgive us.”

  Antoine turned his gaze toward Black and narrowed his eyes. “Another lie. This man isn’t my nephew, and I’m not on any meds. But I am on a crusade to make sure people know the truth about who that man really is.”

  Antoine pointed back at Blunt and approached the witness stand.

  At that moment, the two police officers rushed into the room. Black directed them toward Antoine, and they rushed toward him.

  Antoine noticed them and waved them off. “No, no. This is democracy in action—and justice, too.”

  He plunged his hand into his bag, prompting screams as people dove to the floor.

  “He’s got a gun!” one woman yelled.

  Black noticed both officers go for their firearms when a strange thing happened. Everyone in the room with the exception of himself and Antoine collapsed to the ground in a heap.

  Black stared slack-jawed at the scene. “What just happened?”

  “You shouldn’t be worried about what just happened. It’s what’s about to happen that should interest you the most.”

  Antoine pulled out the gun he’d lifted from the officer and shot out both cameras.

  “What’s going on in there?” Shields squawked. “I just saw the few people in view collapse, and I still can’t see you or Antoine.”

  “I’ll explain later,” Black said. “Just call for help.”

  Black dove to the ground and snatched an officer’s gun from its holster. Without hesitating, he fired at Antoine as he crept toward Blunt.

  “Not today,” Black said, firing at Antoine.

  The jilted agent dove to the ground, avoiding several rounds. Both men took up positions behind tables. Black flipped one over and crouched low.

  “You’re never going to get out of here alive,” Black said.

  “You think I care about that? I came here to get justice and make sure the world learned what kind of man J.D. Blunt really is.”

  “You’ve guaranteed that whatever does happen, you won’t be around to see it.”

  Moments later, two other Capitol Hill police officers stormed in the room.

  Black shouted at them to get down, fearing that Antoine would shoot them. But he didn’t. Instead, the two officers suddenly crumpled to the ground.

  “What’s going on in there?” Shields asked.

  “It’s kind of hard to explain, but everyone just keeps passing out. And I have no idea how he’s doing it,” Black said.

  “How come you haven’t collapsed?” she asked.

  “I have no idea about that either. But thankfully he still has me to contend with or Blunt might already be dead.”

  Black peered around the edge of the overturned desk. “Where’s Dr. Matthews? I know you didn’t invent some device that could do this without him.”

  “Go to hell,” Antoine said before he jumped to his feet and raced toward Blunt’s limp body in the witness stand.

  Black stood and took aim, squeezing off a couple rounds at Antoine. The first one hit him in the shoulder before he ducked, causing the second shot to miss. Antoine remained equidistant to Blunt as Black.

  “Come on out,” Black said, dragging the table with him as a shield while he moved toward his boss. “It’s over.”

  “I’ll be back,” Antoine said. He fired two shots at Black before darting out one of the side doors and into the hallway. Black heard shouting from a security guard before silence.

  Hustling into the hallway, Black found everyone in the vicinity lying on the ground, motionless.

  But Antoine was gone.

  CHAPTER 27

  ANTOINE ACTIVATED THE ULTRASONIC device once he hit the hallway to clear the way. He raced toward the nearest restroom and sized up a man washing his hands before turning on the machine again. When the man fell to the floor, Antoine quickly undr
essed the man who’d been wearing a fedora and glasses. Law enforcement rushed back and forth in an effort to find Antoine. But he was intent on walking out of the Capitol Building like nothing ever happened.

  After the hallways were relatively clear, he strode out and feigned shock as he noticed all the people lying on the floor. He hustled over to one of the security guards and inquired about what had just occurred, both to find out what they knew as well as to act like any normal concerned citizen would.

  “What’s going on?” Antoine asked.

  “There was a disturbance at one of the hearings,” the officer said. “We’re looking for a man wearing a gray suit. There were reports of shots fired, but we haven’t verified any of that yet. Just be careful out there.”

  “Of course,” Antoine said as he nodded at the man and sauntered down the steps and toward the Federal Center station just a couple blocks away.

  While in the bathroom, Antoine had siphoned a few twenty dollar bills out of the man’s wallet. It wasn’t much, but Antoine figured it would get him some food and a rail pass to get around the city until he figured out what he was going to do next. The element of surprise was now gone, so Blunt would be expecting an attack. However, the most troubling part of his plan was the fact that Titus Black was immune to the ultrasonic mechanism.

  In all the testing Antoine had done before utilizing the device, not a single person had ever been able to withstand the frequency, knocking out everyone in a close vicinity for a minimum of five minutes. But not Black. He didn’t even exhibit the slightest symptoms that the ultrasonic sound had on everyone else when the waves were emitted. The rest of the people in the hearing slumped to the floor in a matter of seconds. The operation should’ve been a smooth one. Call out Blunt for his hypocrisy, expose him as a fraud, then exact revenge for what he did. Had Antoine’s plan worked, he figured it would’ve been one helluva way to serve justice on Blunt.

  But with the plot foiled, Antoine wasn’t going to give up just yet. Blunt still needed to pay for what he did. Successfully pinning Senator Hirschbeck’s murder on Blunt would be more challenging for sure but not impossible. Plenty of people in Washington wanted the former Texas senator out of the city all together. His trouble-making ways had come to a head, and something had to give.

  Antoine stepped into the subway train that had just opened its doors. He didn’t care where it was going. Until he assessed the situation and cobbled together a plan that could get revenge for what Blunt had done, Antoine was happy to ride anywhere and for as long as it took.

  Blunt was going down, that much Antoine was sure of.

  CHAPTER 28

  BLUNT GRABBED HIS HEAD and grimaced as he pushed himself off the floor. All around the room, groans emanated from both the congressmen and the people on hand to witness the situation. With a furrowed brow, Blunt tried to determine what had happened. He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut as he hoped the pain would dissipate. But a couple minutes after regaining consciousness, he still felt like someone had walloped him over the head with a hammer.

  “I move to adjourn this hearing,” Chairman Henry said, his voice quivering as he spoke. “The committee will reassess and determine if this is truly necessary.”

  Blunt exhaled, counting the pain worth it all of a sudden. After Elliott’s dismal performance, the majority of the committee members would likely vote against continuing the hearing. The optics were bad enough as Elliott appeared to be conducting little more than a personal witch hunt. Throw in the strange attack that left everyone in the room stunned and rendered incapacitated for a few minutes, and this was one event most sane representatives wouldn’t want returning to Capitol Hill any time soon.

  Wait.

  The attack caused everyone in the room to lose consciousness—everyone except for Antoine.

  And Black. Where’s Titus Black? And how did he not get affected by all this?

  Aside from wondering what the device was that Antoine used, Blunt also questioned why he was still alive. It had to be something to do with Black.

  Black had burst into the hearing just as Antoine was about to take the lectern and deliver a screed unveiling all the sins he believed Blunt committed both past and present. But Antoine hadn’t succeeded. And from what Blunt could tell, Antoine had escaped—but so had Black. Blunt fished his phone out of his pocket and prepared to dial Black’s number when Chairman Henry approached.

  “J.D., I’m really sorry about all this,” he began. “What happened here today—”

  “I don't need your apology,” Blunt said. “Just squash this hearing from happening again, okay? This has probably already done far more harm than good.”

  “This is not what Elliott pitched to us when he said he wanted to conduct this hearing. The scope was much more limited, restricted to questions about the budget.”

  “This was an ambush,” Blunt said. “It’s not good for me. It’s not good for the country. People don’t want to know how the sausage is made. They just want to know that they won’t ever have to witness planes flying into buildings and seeing iconic American structures on fire from flames stoked by terrorists—foreign or domestic.”

  “I know. It’s just that we received a lot of pressure from Wilson Wellington and—”

  “That’s a man you ought to distance yourself from right there,” Blunt said, pointing at Henry’s chest. “Wellington has some skeletons that just might walk out of the closet real soon.”

  “He’s difficult to avoid with all his pull around here.”

  “Trust me. You’ll thank me later.”

  Someone tapped Blunt on the shoulder. He turned around and had a microphone thrust into his face.

  “Mr. Blunt is the one you need to watch out for,” Allison Carter said, nodding at Henry. “This is all just a deflection to keep you from finding out what he’s up to.”

  Blunt forced a smile. “Ms. Carter, what a pleasant surprise. I offered you the story of a lifetime, but you turned it down. When the full story about Wellington breaks and your channel is playing catch up, I’m sure your editors will find it interesting that you declined to pursue the story of year.”

  She cocked her head to the side and smiled wryly. “No, you’re going to be the story of the year. Americans everywhere are going to be demanding to know what your secret organization is doing and how you’ve been allowed to operate above the law for so long.”

  Blunt glared at her. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but I can assure you that it’s all lies. I’m merely a consultant for the D.O.D. If you start trying to dig, you’ll find a big fat dead end. Meanwhile, your competitor will be cleaning up in the ratings when they break the truth about Wellington.”

  “Are you threatening me, J.D., right here in front of Chairman Henry?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m merely warning you about the professional disgrace that will befall you if you don’t focus your energy on the real criminal on Capitol Hill.”

  Allison kept her microphone near his mouth. “So, you’re not willing to comment on Mr. Elliott’s accusations?”

  “You have two other stories that will be far more important to the American people than some manufactured exposé on how you think our national security should operate,” Blunt said. “We keep Americans like you safe and out of harm’s way, but you think badgering me about this issue is going to result in more viewers? Good luck selling that story to the public.”

  “Thank you for your time,” she said. “I have more than enough for a riveting story.”

  Blunt turned his focus back toward Henry. “This right here is why Elliott’s hearing was a disaster. Don’t let this happen again.”

  “What did happen here?” Henry asked. “One minute we were all watching some lunatic attack you, the next minute, we’re waking up from what felt like a month-long slumber.”

  “I have no idea, but I intend to find out,” Blunt said before spinning on his heels and striding toward the door.

  Blunt was stoppe
d at the door by a couple of Capitol Hill police. They wanted to interview him about what went down.

  “There are a hundred other people in there who will tell you the same thing,” Blunt said. “We don’t know happened, just that we were all victims. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have places I need to be.”

  Blunt pushed his way past the officers, who didn’t move. When he reached the hallway, Allison Carter was waiting for him. He muttered a few expletives and rolled his eyes.

  “I know you have better things to do than harass me, but for some reason, you can’t stop,” he said.

  “No,” she said, holding the microphone behind her back. “You’re going to tell me how Senator Hirschbeck really died, or I’m going to pin your ass to the wall.”

  Blunt narrowed his eyes and leaned in close, speaking in a soft voice. “You want to know what happened to Hirschbeck?”

  She nodded and whipped her microphone from around her back and placed it near his lips.

  “I. Don’t. Know.”

  “Sources tell me that he confronted you about several line items in the defense bill when you were serving together in the senate. Can you confirm or deny that?”

  Blunt sighed and eyed her closely. “I gave you the story of the year with Wilson Wellington, yet you haven’t pursued it. What did he tell you? What promises did he make you?”

  She smiled at him. “I’m going to take that as confirmation that Hirschbeck confronted you.”

  “Take my response however you wish, but don’t dare twist my words. You’re going to regret this; that much I can promise you.”

  He turned in the other direction and kept walking, ignoring her pleas to stop.

  What happened to Black?

  CHAPTER 29

  TITUS BLACK EXITED THE Capitol Building and surveyed the grounds in front of him, searching for anyone who looked remotely like Antoine. The assassin had the capability to incapacitate an entire room at once. While the technology was frightening, Black found it impressive. And though Antoine refused to say whether Dr. Matthews was working with him, a response was no longer necessary. Black was convinced that such a revolutionary and ground-breaking piece of equipment could only be developed by someone with Dr. Matthews’s acumen.