The Asset

by Shane Kuhn

  The internal panic voice reared its ugly head again.

  I’m not trained for this. I can’t even hold my fucking breath in a swimming pool for more than thirty seconds, let alone survive waterboarding.

  “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled to himself inside the sweltering black hood.

  He heard and felt the telltale signs that the airplane had begun its descent. The clock was ticking. He knew he was a dead man, but he had to keep his head screwed on straight in case that one chance in hell to escape presented itself.

  Back to the angles. Where were they taking him? The airplane had a range of nearly eight thousand nautical miles. Depending on how long he’d been out, they could have taken him almost anywhere in the world. When he was losing consciousness, he was pretty sure he’d heard his abductors speaking Arabic. Having lived in Israel, he knew how it sounded. The man who shot him with the dart spoke English but had a slight French accent, which meant he might be North African. The connection to France was potentially strengthened by the type of airplane—Bombardier, a French-­Canadian manufacturer.

  If they were North African, they might be landing in Morocco, or more likely Algeria—somewhere they could hide him away for an indeterminate amount of time with zero cooperation from the local government if, by some miracle, someone came looking for him. This thought threw Kennedy into a very dark place. He was more than likely being taken to a hostile country to be tortured to death. When they were finished with him, they would dump his corpse like garbage, toothless and without fingertips or eyeballs, to make identification impossible. And no one was going to come looking for him. He hadn’t told a soul he was going to Paris, and there were no customs records or travel documentation to track him. He was about to become the ghost Love had been talking about the night before.

  The plane landed and taxied for several minutes. Kennedy listened for the sounds of other planes, but the world outside was silent. He assumed they’d taken him to a remote airstrip, which made sense, considering their cargo. He heard a door open and several pairs of strong hands dragged him onto the floor of the main cabin. He felt a hand on his neck and hoped the bag was coming off, but the hand only checked his pulse.

  “Can someone please take this hood off?” he whispered hoarsely.

  No reply. They weren’t even talking to each other.

  “Please—” he began, but a needle pricked the side of his neck and he was out.

  Freezing, foul-smelling water thrown in his face brought Kennedy back to life, and he woke up shivering on a concrete floor that stank of bleach and old blood. They had taken the bag off his head, and his hands and feet were no longer bound. Bright fluorescent overhead lights burned into his eyes. When he could finally focus, he saw he was in a massive meat locker, surrounded by pig carcasses and sides of beef dangling from metal hooks on heavy chains. Bone saws, long knives, and cleavers big enough to fell a tree hung on the wall above a huge steel prep table.

  Using what felt like his last ounce of strength, he dragged himself off the floor and got to his feet. His legs, screaming in pain with the jabs of a million pins and needles from hours of bad circulation, buckled, and he wasn’t sure if his dead-fish arms could break his fall. A man grabbed him by the arm from behind, steadying him. When he walked around to face Kennedy, he wasn’t wearing his balaclava, but Kennedy could tell by the eyes, deep brown and softly menacing, that it was the man who had shot him with the tranq dart at LAX. Definitely Arab, with a full beard and a scar under his eye.

  “Can you hear me?” the man asked.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” Kennedy croaked.

  “Good. Do you know your name?”

  “Fuck you.”

  No response.

  “Do you know what year it is?”

  “What do you want, asshole?” Kennedy asked through gritted teeth.

  The man rested the barrel of a gun on Kennedy’s forehead.

  “I’m not playing with darts anymore, so you should be more polite.”

  He walked to the door of the meat locker and knocked, signaling his men to unlock it from the outside. It sounded like they were using a padlock, which meant that the door was not going to be a viable escape route. Two more men entered, and someone outside locked them in again. Both were clean-shaven and also appeared to be Arabs. One of them was short and runty with fierce glowering eyes, and carried a military-style duffel bag. The other was heavyset, with a pockmarked face and huge burn-scarred hands.

  They spoke to the man with the beard in what Kennedy thought might be Farsi, their voices intense and increasingly argumentative. During their heated exchange, Kennedy scanned every inch of the meat locker and saw no additional exits. There were large blood drains in the floor though, making it possible to smash through the tile and squeeze into a drainpipe. It wasn’t a great option, especially when Kennedy thought about crawling through coagulated animal blood, but it would make it difficult for them to extract him.

  A deep, mechanical sound shook the room. Elevator motor. The drains on the floor probably meant he was in the basement, so he might be able to find a way out if he could get to an upper floor. What else? The cold air needed to preserve the meat was likely being pumped into the room from the ceiling, as it would be too heavy to rise. He examined the ceiling for vents. There were a few, but nothing large enough to accommodate him. It was beginning to look like the blood drain was his only option when he saw a large square opening—maybe four feet by four feet—on the ceiling in the far corner of the room. Maybe an HVAC service port?

  His mind was working overtime, analyzing every detail of the room. In the corner were stacked boxes with French words written on them, and what appeared to be a safety instruction sign, also in French, was riveted above a wall-mounted first aid kit. If he was in France, rather than North Africa, then it was possible the opening in the ceiling was put there originally as a bomb shelter escape hatch. Hundreds of old buildings in France and England had them during the endless German bombing raids of World War II. And they were often in the basement—the equivalent of a concrete-fortified bunker. If he was right about the location, and if this building were World War II era, and if it indeed was a bomb shelter door . . .

  Kennedy’s deductions were interrupted when he heard the heavy zipper rip open the duffel bag. The bearded one reached in and handed his heavyset associate a long serrated knife. Then he handed the runt a video camcorder. As they zip-tied his hands, Kennedy understood why the ISIS beheading victims he had seen in photographs just before their execution looked like deer in headlights. He was going to be slaughtered like one of the pigs mocking him at the end of a metal hook. The panic racing through his veins nearly made him pass out, but he bit his tongue hard, drawing blood, and the pain kept him conscious.

  The heavyset man grabbed Kennedy by the hair and showed him the dirty knife.

  “I will ask you questions, yes?” said the bearded man.

  “Yes,” Kennedy said, trying to sound strong.

  “If you do not give me the answers I want, he will cut off your head like one of these pigs and your American friends will see you on CNN.”

  The man with the knife grabbed a hanging pig carcass and sawed its head off in a few sickening strokes. Kennedy tried not to puke.

  “If you tell me what I want to know, I will shoot you in the head and you will die quickly, with honor.”

  “I will cooperate,” Kennedy said.

  The runt with the camera started arguing with the bearded man. It heated up quickly, and the bearded man backhanded him.

  “He says you are a soft little woman who knows nothing and I should kill you as a political statement,” the bearded man said. “I hope you have something useful to say.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “TSA security-pad codes for every major airport in US. Highest-level access.”

  Kennedy felt the blood rush o
ut of his face. He hadn’t memorized them. There were too many. And his TSA contacts usually escorted him around anyway. It must have been written all over his face because the runt started in again, pointing and shouting at Kennedy. He and the bearded man almost came to blows again. The bearded man angrily bellowed at both of his cohorts, and they all went back outside the meat locker, where they got into a violent shouting match.

  Kennedy knew it was time to do or die. He brought his arms under his butt and wriggled until he could step through and get his hands in front of him. Then he raked the zip tie on a bone saw blade until it cut through and freed his hands. He grabbed one of the loose carcass hooks from a metal basket and slipped the hook tine through the latch on the door, locking it from the inside. It would hold, but not for long.

  Moving quickly, he grabbed the bone saw and a long extension cord hanging near the prep table. As he ran to the back corner of the room, the men shattered the glass on the door’s porthole window and opened fire, but they didn’t have a clear shot through all the carcasses. Kennedy took cover and looked for a way to get up to the panel on the ceiling. One of the pig carcasses was hanging on a chain next to it. He plugged in the bone saw and secured the cord so it couldn’t come unplugged, then slung the saw and extension cord over his shoulder and climbed up to the top of the carcass.

  He ripped into the ceiling panel with the bone saw, cutting through the ancient plaster with ease and revealing the metal door he was hoping to find. It had a handle cut into it, so he stuffed his hand in it and pulled with all his might, but it was rusted shut. He cut the corroded hinges away with the saw and slammed the butt of it into the metal door until it broke free and fell to the floor.

  As he climbed into the large metal shaft, the men outside the meat locker snapped the tine off the meat hook in the latch and rushed through the door. While Kennedy crawled through the dark, narrow passage, they sprinted across the room and climbed up after him. Kennedy was moving through the shaft as quickly as he could, cutting and bruising his elbows and knees on the rusty metal. He saw a light at the end of the tunnel when he heard one of the men coming after him in the shaft.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot you!” the bearded man yelled.

  Kennedy pressed on, fueled by a surge of adrenaline. He reached a large duct vent with light coming through from the room on the other side. He slammed all of his body weight against the vent and fell headlong through the opening, landing hard on the floor of a commercial kitchen. While an army of kitchen staff stared in disbelief, Kennedy rose and sprinted through the swinging door and down a dark hallway. He reached a set of stairs, pounded up them, and ran down another hallway. Footsteps were coming close behind. He could hear the murmur of a crowd of people at the end of the hallway. He ran toward the sound, desperate for help. There was a swinging service door at the end of the hall. He burst through it and froze. A hundred or so well-dressed people having lunch in a posh dining room turned and stared at him in horror. In an instant, he knew where he was.

  The restaurant Les Ambassadeurs at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris.

  Kennedy’s eyes darted around the room, where he’d dined on several occasions with European clients. He was too shell-shocked to think or move. Mercifully, a woman with comforting eyes and a warm smile materialized in front of him. Her chic, understated suit gave her the air of a manager or concierge.

  “Monsieur,” she said with an American accent. “Puis-je vous aider?”

  “Yes, I need to—”

  “American?”

  He nodded, unable to speak through the wad of cotton in his mouth.

  “Me too.”

  She extended a manicured hand. He shook it and she led him to the lobby.

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Los Angeles,” he said, surprising himself.

  Her eyes lit up.

  “I’m from San Francisco.”

  “Oh . . . ” he started awkwardly.

  “You didn’t tell me your name,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, obsessively surveying the room, looking for his captors.

  They stopped walking.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Kennedy’s face flushed. The woman touched his arm. He flinched.

  “Have you been a guest here before?”

  “Many times,” he said as the room spun slowly.

  “I thought I recognized you. We have a hospitality suite. There’s a phone, as well as some toiletries and light refreshments. Would you like to use it for a couple of hours?”

  He was so grateful he almost burst into tears. They rode the elevator to one of the upper floors and the door opened into the foyer of an expansive suite. She led Kennedy into the sitting room, and he stopped cold.

  His captors were all there, smiling at him.

  “Relax and have a drink,” she said pleasantly. “It’s not what you think.”

  She sat him down in a leather club chair and poured him a glass of his favorite Japanese whiskey. Kennedy looked at the men in the room. With their normal demeanors, they looked like young professionals instead of violent thugs.

  He couldn’t speak.

  “My name is Alia. I’m a senior operations officer in the CIA’s Clandestine Service. These men are not terrorists. They’re field agents.”

  Kennedy felt dizzy and dropped his whiskey tumbler. One of the men refilled his glass and handed it to him with a rueful smile.

  “I want to apologize for the stressful nature of our evaluation,” Alia said.

  “Evaluation?”

  “For a new intelligence-gathering program I want you to be a part of.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re not making any fucking sense.”

  “I’m recruiting you.”

  “Recruiting me?” he said cynically. “As what?”

  “An asset.”

  She handed him a thick file folder with the CIA emblem and the word CLASSIFIED emblazoned across the top.

  “Go ahead, read it.”

  He opened it. It was a highly detailed dossier on him, with photographs and surveillance documents tracking his movements over the past three years. Cold sweat filmed over his palms.

  “I had to be sure I was making the right choice,” Alia explained. “After tonight, there’s no doubt in my mind. What do you think? Would you consider working for us?”

  “Thirty minutes ago you had me thinking I was going to be the next ISIS sideshow in the YouTube circus. Why wouldn’t I want to work for someone like that?”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have done this if it weren’t vital to national security. Would you like something to eat? I can call—”

  “Just get to the point,” he said.

  “That will be all for today, gentlemen,” she said.

  Her men filed out of the room.

  “The program I want you to join is called Red Carpet, and it’s the first CIA operation of its kind ever to take place on American soil. You’ve read the recent terror threat memo from Homeland Security?”

  Kennedy nodded.

  “The part about this being a large-scale, coordinated attack on an indeterminate number of US airports was taken directly from a briefing I sent to Homeland two years ago. When I learned about this plot from our field agents, I knew we would need a specialized asset to help us gather intel. You.”

  “What could I possibly know that the CIA doesn’t?”

  “Your expertise in airport security is practically legendary. I’d venture to guess you know more than the head of TSA.”

  “That’s not saying much. And there are plenty of experts in my field.”

  “True, but they’re mostly think-tank types. You’re always in the field, touching base with your network of clients, keeping your boots on the ground. You’re a road warrior, a million-mile fli
er who drinks with pilots, knows flight attendants by name, and more important, they know you by name. Even if I had a full decade to do it, I could never train the best field agent to know what you know and move in your circles. And you have no family ties that could be used to leverage you. You’re the perfect lone wolf, in my opinion.”

  “Thanks for making me feel even worse about my life.”

  “Your work is your life. Nothing wrong with that. It’s mine too. And if you were making a difference in that clusterfuck of DHS and TSA, you would be a lot happier. Work with us and I can guarantee you’ll make a difference. Interested?”

  “If it’s anything like your test, absolutely not.”

  “I needed to see how you would function under extreme duress. You actually tested higher than most of the former military officers they’re always sending our way. You didn’t crack, kept your head, and found a way out. Quite frankly, we never expected you to actually escape. Finding that bomb shelter door was brilliant. I know seasoned field agents who would never have worked that scenario. But, as I said, the test is not the job. I just needed to know how you would react if, by some off chance, you were in a similar scenario. Since you’re a civilian, we have to go with a trial-by-fire method.”

  “I’m flattered, but alive. What do you mean when you say by some off chance, I were in a similar scenario?”

  “Suffice to say this will be far safer, statistically, than driving in Los Angeles. All we want you to do is provide information we don’t have the resources to gather.”