The Shield

by Ken Fite

  “We need to get going,” I called out to Willis, thinking we should check out the other two client addresses.

  Willis glanced back at me from the other room. He held a hand up, telling me to give him another minute.

  I lowered my gaze and studied the addresses for another moment. Then I closed the file and reached over and closed the lid to the laptop and stacked the file folder on top of it and disconnected the power. I picked up both items and took one last look around the office, hoping I wasn’t missing anything. I could hear Willis talking to Parker in a low voice. There was a sense of urgency in what he was saying, but I couldn’t make out the words he was speaking. I started to tell him again that we needed to go when my cell buzzed. I held onto the laptop and the file with one hand and reached for my cell with the other.

  “This is Jordan,” I said.

  The caller said their name. They spoke for thirty seconds, relaying new information to me. Then they asked a question, but I said nothing in response. Just stood completely stunned as my heart beat faster.

  FORTY-THREE

  MY HEART BEAT faster as Jon Miller and I approached the home our CO believed Omar Malik was visiting, with fifteen minutes to spare. Miller parked the Humvee three blocks south of the home. We sat in the dark for a minute, looking at the map. Miller went through the plan as I studied the neighborhood and looked out the window, watching the occasional vehicle drive near us. I felt uneasy about the mission. We’d always been trained to know the best time for an operation like this was at four o’clock in the morning. But Greenberg needed Malik picked up fast, and the CIA was forcing our hand to move in now.

  “We’ve got to go in,” said Miller as I set the timer on my watch. “You ready?”

  I nodded in the dark. Folded the map and set it down. We swung our doors open and checked our tactical gear. We readied our weapons and started moving in. Miller led the way and I followed, glancing back and forth between the run-down homes that lined both sides of the street as we moved. Within five minutes, we got to the place where we believed Omar Malik was staying. Neither of us spoke. Just communicated to each other with hand gestures like we always did on missions. Miller pointed to the back of the home. I nodded and moved in fast. I stopped by the door and leaned back against the wall. I found my flashlight and held it flush with the bottom of my weapon. I turned. Took a few steps back and leveled my firearm.

  Then I stepped forward and kicked the door in hard.

  It splintered open and swung inward. I stepped back toward the wall again and fired my weapon, sending stray bullets into the air. I heard the voice of a man yelling urgently in Pashto. A woman screamed. Then I could hear the voice of a young child sobbing. I fired my weapon again and heard the man again. His voice was growing distant from where I stood. Miller yelled for me. I turned my flashlight on and kept it underneath my weapon and held both out in front of me as I turned and entered the home. I was breathing hard as I moved the light and my weapon from side to side, scanning the entire room as I went.

  I saw no one.

  I came out on the other side and exited through the front door. Miller had his weapon trained on a man. There was a woman and an older son standing next to the guy. They looked disoriented and confused.

  “Is it him?” I asked.

  “Let’s find out,” said Miller.

  I moved around the man. Kept my weapon and my light trained on his face. The man closed his eyes and looked away. I saw the scar on his face.

  “It’s him,” said Miller, studying him.

  I kept my weapon aimed at Omar Malik and thought about what our CO had told us. There was no way of knowing exactly when the CIA’s drone heading toward us a few thousand feet in the sky would lock onto the location and send a pair of Hellfire missiles into the home. We needed to get back to camp.

  “We need to go,” I said.

  Miller nodded. “Get the wife and son,” he said. I watched as Miller grabbed hold of the back of Malik’s shirt and pushed him forward with a weapon to the back of his head as he started walking to the Humvee.

  The wife and son were staring at me. I stuffed the flashlight into my pocket and kept my weapon on them and nodded toward Miller for them to follow him. But the woman became distracted. She furrowed her brow and looked at her son, then turned to look all around her. She started yelling something in Pashto. Some kind of name. She became frantic. I glanced at the son briefly before looking past him to Miller. Omar Malik had stopped walking. He turned back and said a word in Pashto I recognized. Lur . Daughter.

  Malik started walking back toward the home. Miller grabbed the man and forced him to the ground. When I turned back, I saw the woman approaching the home, calling a name again. I moved fast. Grabbed her arm, but she pulled away from me and stepped back into the home and disappeared from sight.

  Miller told me to help him with Malik, who was putting up a fight. I jogged over and helped restrain him. Miller cuffed Malik as I kept my eyes on the home. The son stayed at the door, staring. A light turned on.

  “Lur ,” he said again and repeated it over and over again as Miller and I exchanged a glance.

  “He’s saying his daughter is inside,” I said.

  “I know what he’s saying,” said Miller. “The guy’s lying. Greenberg said there was only a wife and a son.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said, glancing at my watch. Three minutes . “His wife looks shaken up.”

  “How could they be?” he asked. “They don’t even know what’s about to happen.”

  “All they know is we’re taking them and leaving their daughter here,” I said. “I’m going back in to check.”

  Miller stood as I stayed on top of Malik with my left hand on his back and my right gripping my weapon. “No, you stay. I’ll go and bring her back out.” He looked at the kid, then at Malik. “Watch them carefully.”

  He started jogging toward the home. I checked my watch again. “You’ve got two minutes,” I yelled.

  Miller went to the boy and put a hand on his shoulder. Pointed to where I was crouched with his father. He pushed the kid hard to get him to start walking. Miller waited for him to start moving; then he went inside and disappeared. Then the kid stopped and stood still, ten feet away from the front door, waiting.

  “Keep moving,” I yelled to the kid, motioning for him to walk toward his father and me.

  But he remained where he was for thirty more seconds. I looked on, waiting.

  I checked my watch again. Less than a minute . I stood. Omar Malik remained on the ground but lifted his head and stared up at me. I pointed at him. “Don’t move,” I said and kept my weapon trained on him but moved a few feet closer to the home. I yelled for Miller, but heard nothing as I looked up into the dark sky. My heart was racing. The kid got closer and moved past me, headed to the open door. I couldn’t stop him.

  I turned and faced him, urging him to stop. I was about thirty feet away from the home when it happened.

  The blow was hard against the back of my head. I staggered forward a step before falling to the ground. There were shouts inside the home. My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see anything. Everything was black. I blinked several times, and finally my eyes adjusted, and I saw Omar Malik in front of me. His hands were still cuffed, but were now in front of him somehow. He’d used the metal cuffs to try to knock me out.

  I tried to yell, but nothing came out. I blinked hard again and slowly started to move and lift myself up. When I got to my feet, the boy was almost to the door and Omar Malik was right behind him. My eyes grew wide as I watched Miller emerge from the home, holding the wrists of Malik’s wife and a little girl.

  The timer went off on my watch. There was a high-pitched sound in the sky. Something I hadn’t heard before, but I understood what it was. “Jon, you need to get out of there now!” I yelled as I got to my feet. A second later, the missile struck the house, and the force of the impact knocked me back onto the ground. My ears were ringing loud. Total dar
kness. I felt heat on my face. Flames nearby. I couldn’t breathe at all. Just closed my eyes and stayed motionless on the dirt, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me.

  FORTY-FOUR

  IT FELT LIKE the wind had been knocked out of me. Willis stepped back into the office.

  “I have to call you back,” I said and clicked off and stuffed my cell phone back into my pocket.

  “Parker says Morgan and Simon haven’t made any progress,” he said.

  I nodded vaguely and looked away, confused. “You talk to anyone else?” I asked and turned back to Willis. He shook his head and I nodded again. “I just got off the phone with Chris Reed,” I lied. “He gave me the same update from Mulvaney. The FBI’s Cyber Division hasn’t taken back control of the CIA’s drones yet.”

  “Any word from Creech?”

  “They still haven’t been able to make contact,” I lied again, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  Willis pointed to the front door. “We need to get going. You get Hayes’s work address from Morgan yet?”

  “He just texted it to me.”

  “Good,” he said and started for the door.

  I held onto the laptop and the file folder and followed Willis out to his SUV. We climbed inside and Willis started the motor. He turned the heater on and then he looked at me. “Address?”

  I set the laptop down on the floorboard and opened the file folder and thumbed through to get to the client list. “I don’t think we should go to the work address,” I said as I found the page I was looking for.

  “Why not?”

  “Chris’s text said Mulvaney already sent people there,” I said as I turned on an overhead dome light.

  “Okay,” said Willis. “What do you think we should do, then?”

  I held up the paper from the file with the current and prospective clients list. Ignored the address where we’d found Frasier. I pointed at the other two addresses. “I think we should go to one of these.”

  Willis narrowed his eyes and stared at me. “And what do you think we’ll find there?”

  I shrugged. “Think about it,” I said. “Robert Hayes built an override device for the NSA. Then he left to start a consulting business. He’s dealing with simulations. Maybe something having to do with drones. Maybe we’ll find something.” I studied the addresses. “Which one do you want to go to?”

  He grabbed the paper and looked it over. “The second one,” he said and held the paper out.

  I took it from him. “The other one’s closer. Why don’t we go there first?” I said, to see what he’d do.

  Willis nodded reluctantly. He put his SUV in gear and pulled out onto the street and navigated out of the neighborhood. We drove in silence for five minutes. My mind was racing. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins. The phone call I received had confused me. I thought the whole thing through. Tried to find some kind of explanation, something that would make sense, but came up with nothing. Willis was taking his time. There was a low hum from the SUV as he navigated the dark streets. Up ahead, I saw a large ravine lit up by the moon overhead. I took a deep breath. Let it out slowly and turned to face Willis.

  The man was staring straight ahead, deep in thought. Both hands were set on the steering wheel. I faced forward again. Started running through everything from the past several hours. The initial drone strike at the White House and another strike on Marine One . The meetings with Parker and the Secret Service. Every conversation I’d had since I decided to help Parker and Willis look for the people responsible. Another minute passed as a thought crossed my mind, and I wondered if I’d been wrong about everything.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Willis from the wheel, noticing me watching him.

  “Just trying to figure something out,” I said as my mind kept racing and I tried to put the pieces together. I was still confused by the phone call I received.

  I faced forward. Saw him glaring at me out of the corner of my eye. Glancing at the road then back over to me every couple of seconds. “What if we were wrong?” I finally said. “Wrong about what this is all about.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Omar Malik has an override device,” I said. “A replica he had built. How’d he build it?”

  Willis shrugged. “The NSA was hacked,” he said. “The schematics were stolen and given to him.”

  Silence filled the vehicle. Only the hum from the engine could be heard. “What if they weren’t hacked?”

  Willis said nothing.

  “What if the reason nobody can find a system breach is because the system was never breached? What if someone with the right level of authority simply accessed the schematics and stole them for Malik?”

  “We know there was a hack,” said Willis.

  “We know there was a breach,” I said. “The hack was assumed.”

  “You’re telling me someone within the NSA just straight up stole the schematics undetected?”

  “Not the NSA,” I said. “The FBI. It was part of a bundle of artifacts on a network drive shared between the two agencies. They don’t know why it was placed there or when, but the NSA confirmed they were taken.”

  Willis drove on. He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Who told you all this?”

  “Parker,” I said.

  “When?”

  I glanced left. “At the house. At the same time you said you were talking to him.”

  We stared at each other for a second. We both went for our weapons. I was fast. But Willis was faster.

  FORTY-FIVE

  IN ONE QUICK motion, Willis drew his weapon and rested the muzzle against my temple at the same time he slammed on the brakes. “Drop it,” he said. I loosened my grip on my Glock. Willis pulled the Tahoe to the side of the road. He stopped hard and nodded past me. “Open the door and get out, nice and easy.”

  My heart was beating hard in my chest. I hesitated. Willis pushed the muzzle harder against my temple. I raised my left hand and used my right to pull the door handle. I swung the door open. Slid out and stood.

  “Get rid of the gun,” said Willis, aiming his weapon at me from inside the SUV.

  I did what he asked. I slowly reached for it, using my thumb and forefinger to lift it out of my holster, and bent slightly as I dropped it onto the ground. I raised both hands into the air. Willis awkwardly moved the weapon to his other hand for a moment as he put the Tahoe in park and stepped out fast. He switched it back and kept the weapon aimed at me as he left his door open and moved around the hood and stopped.

  “Your cell phone,” he said. “Take it out of your pocket and toss it over to me.”

  I thought about what he was doing. Dug my phone out of my pocket and threw it to him. Willis caught it. He tossed it onto the passenger seat through the door I had left open, and turned back and smiled at me.

  He stepped closer. I glanced over my shoulder. Noticed a short metal road barrier behind me. The ravine I’d seen in the distance was now behind me. I stepped over the barrier and took a step backward. Felt a spike of adrenaline surge through me as I saw how far down the drop went. It was a steep grade. Maybe forty-five degrees. The earth cut downward two or three feet behind me and scaled down about a hundred feet into what looked like a mostly dried-up ravine with some water at the very bottom of it.

  I turned back. Willis was holding his weapon up with one hand, leveled at me. The headlights from the Tahoe were still on. They gave a faint lighting to one side of his face. I could see that he was still smiling.

  “You should’ve never gotten involved,” he said. “I tried to warn you. I told you to let me call the shots.”

  He stepped forward. I took a step backward.

  “Why’d you do it?” I said. “Why’d you take the schematics?”

  Willis said nothing. Just stared across at me.

  “Was it because you knew you were going to get fired? An act of defiance before the Bureau let you go?”

  To my left I saw a car far in the distance drivin
g toward us. Its headlights caught Willis’s eye. He glanced right and noticed it, then turned back to look at me. “Lower your hands,” he said and hid his weapon inside his jacket. He was still gripping it. Still staring at me and still smiling. “I didn’t get fired, Jordan.”

  “I heard Mulvaney,” I said. “In the conference room. It sounded like he was sorry about the way it ended.”

  The car approached. Its headlights lit the two of us as it rounded the curve, then passed by us quickly.

  Willis brought the weapon back out of his jacket and leveled it again. He cocked his head to one side. “That’s what you think?” he asked. “You think he fired me and was regretting it now that I’m with DHS?”

  I said nothing. Just stared at him in the silence.

  “You misread the situation,” he said. “Mulvaney tried to keep me after I turned in my resignation.”

  Willis took another step forward. I took another step backward. I could feel the drop-off with my foot. I glanced back. Saw I had no more room. I turned back to face Willis, and I felt cold sweat all over my body.

  “You can’t steal from the FBI if you’re going to get fired, Jordan,” he said. “Didn’t you run the Chicago DDC office? Didn’t you get fired yourself? You should know better. They go through everything you did if you get fired. Every file you touched in the last six months. Every phone call you made. They have people that check all of those things if they suspect you in the slightest.” He paused briefly. “But not if you quit.”

  I said nothing.

  “No, if you quit to take a job at another agency, they assume the best. They assume you’re a model employee. They figure the new agency is going to run their own background checks and do their own screenings. The FBI’s just got too much to do, especially with the shutdown. It was too easy, Jordan.” Willis paused, thinking about it. “My access was terminated immediately, the very day I left. I was counting on it. That’s what they do.” He paused again. “I ran the damn New York City field office, Jordan. Last guy on earth anybody would ever expect to steal something from the Bureau. Think about it.”