The Asset

by Shane Kuhn

  “I know, right? Fire up the app when you get it. I’ve already programmed the IP in question so it will start sniffing it out right away. If the user has his special Lentz IM app open, we can deploy an API that links it to the GPS sat Langley uses to track agents and assets in the field. It’s accurate to within a square meter so you buy him a cup of coffee. Cool, right?”

  “Very.”

  “Nervous?”

  “I wasn’t expecting toe-to-toe contact.”

  “Just let Best handle it.”

  “Great idea if he were here.”

  “What? Where the hell is he? Wait, have you gone rogue?”

  “Relax. He’s at the safe house. I was having dinner with the TSA chief and thought, since I was here, I might as well—”

  “Shit! You have gone rogue. I don’t know if I should be impressed or send a crew to scrub you right now.”

  “Calm down,” he whispered harshly. “And stop yelling in my ear.”

  “Yeah, ’cause what I should be doing is slapping you upside your head. This isn’t a Netflix original series about a soccer dad spy, dummy. If you flush one of Lentz’s crew you might get smoked.”

  “I’m not going rogue and I’m not going to get smoked. I just wanted to see if the guy is here. If I get a whiff of anything professional, I’ll call it in.”

  “Dude, by the time you get a whiff, the professionals will already have a bead on you. I think you need to hang back and get Best over there before you do anything.”

  “What’s that?” Kennedy said. “You’re breaking up. I don’t have any bars here.”

  “Bullshit, there’s a tower less than a quarter mile—”

  He hung up and texted her, saying she better not dime on him or he would tell Alia she helped him. After a string of obscene text replies, she eventually let it go. But she had sufficiently freaked Kennedy out, so he proceeded more cautiously, promising himself that if it turned out the owner of the IP address was present at the airport, he would call Best and Alia and take his licks for having attempted a solo mission.

  As if the heavens agreed with Nuri, it started to rain heavily. He had gone out there without a raincoat or umbrella so he was instantly soaked. He downloaded Nuri’s app and fired it up, but the interface was completely foreign to him. It was a grid with tiny flashing numbers and it reminded him of an air traffic control screen. Desperate for help, he called her back.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me. Did you know I could kill you about thirty different ways with my bare hands?”

  “I can’t figure this thing out. It’s completely nonintuitive.”

  “Yeah, to the untrained eye.”

  “Isn’t that what nonintuitive means?”

  “Okay, smart-ass—”

  “Nuri, please. It’s pissing rain. I just want to see if the guy is on shift. If he is, you can speed-rope in and kill him with your bare hands, okay?”

  “There’s an idea.”

  “Please just tell me how to use this.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll mirror my app with yours so I can guide you.”

  “That would be amazing.”

  “Okay, I’ve got it open and I can see your signal,” she said.

  “Can you see his IP?”

  “Checking . . . Holy shit. He, or she, is there.”

  “Really?” Kennedy whispered.

  “Pretty sure, but verifying . . . Yep, definitely there.”

  “Jesus, where?”

  Kennedy ran under the huge steel eave of the Delta maintenance hangar to get out of the rain. The mist and heavy cloud cover made the apron pitch-dark and only the occasional flash of airplane landing lights would cut through the night and briefly illuminate everything like a massive strobe light.

  “Checking,” Nuri said. “Signal sucks. Must be the rain. Hang on . . . Okay, got it. It looks like our bad guy’s signal is coming from the apron near Terminal E, about a half a click from the Delta maintenance hangar.”

  Kennedy’s blood ran cold.

  “Are you sure?” he tried to whisper. “That’s exactly where I’m standing.”

  “What? Yes, I’m sure.” Her voice lowered. “You better get out of there.”

  An airplane landing light whipped across the apron as a plane taxied in and briefly illuminated a tall man dressed in a black raincoat and black baseball cap about a hundred yards away, jogging right toward Kennedy. The way he was dressed, he looked a lot more like an assassin than a maintenance worker.

  “Oh shit,” Kennedy said and hung up.

  The airplane turned to taxi to its gate and the apron was dark again. Kennedy sprinted around the side of the Delta hangar and spotted a sea of luggage trailers stored in long rows near the service road fence. He found a place to hide among the trailers and watched for the man, hoping he was just an airport official wanting to see his credentials. But another landing light flooded the area and Kennedy got a good look as the man walked slowly toward the luggage trailers. He was holding a gun with a barrel suppressor close to his side, scanning the area with a tactical LED flashlight.

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” Kennedy whispered to himself.

  He grabbed his sat phone and sent Nuri a 911 text. The flashlight beam blinded him and a bullet nicked the edge of the luggage trailer he was standing next to, narrowly missing his head. He ran, weaving through the labyrinth of trailers and tugs, heading for the service road fence. On the other side, there was a Dunkin’ Donuts and a gas station next to one of the short-term parking lots. Bullets zipped past him, sparking off the edges of the metal trailers and bouncing with ricochet whines across the asphalt. One of them tore through his pant leg, missing his ankle by centimeters.

  Kennedy could hear the man’s footsteps relentlessly approaching, and the bullets kept coming. A round zipped past his ear so close he could feel its heat and he dove down under the cargo trailers and waited, his shaking hand cupped over his mouth, trying to muffle the sound of his heavy breathing. The service road fence was out. It was too high, had razor wire on the top, and was too well lit. He’d be a sitting duck up there. There was an open maintenance garage close by. It was dark inside, a good place to hide, and it had tools and equipment he might be able to use as weapons.

  He heard footsteps again. The man was getting closer. How the hell was the guy finding him so quickly? He had to be tracking his sat phone, even though Kennedy wondered how he managed to lock into what was supposed to be a completely secure device. He didn’t want to abandon his only connection to help but he might be able to distance himself if he ditched it. As he frantically weighed his options, he remembered something Noah Kruz had said in The You in Universe:

  The only way to deal with aggression is with aggression. Running from someone or something perpetuates the problem because you are feeding the response the aggressor seeks. You’ve heard the term “feeding on the weak”? Bullies, from the playground to the penitentiary, are nourished by fear. When you meet their aggression with your own, they have nothing to eat.

  It was like walking into a prison yard on the first day and beating the shit out of the biggest guy you could find. At that point, you defined yourself to your enemies as something other than easy prey. The guy coming after him had defined Kennedy in his head as a runner, a frightened amateur in over his head. If Kennedy wanted to live, he had to do the exact opposite of what his aggressor expected.

  And there were no more places to run.

  He took off his shoes and crawled out from under the luggage trailer. He threw one shoe about thirty feet and it clattered noisily across the ground. Bullets peppered the spot where it had landed and Kennedy took that opportunity to run into the maintenance garage. When he got in there, he threw the other shoe to a different spot near where the previous one had landed and bought himself a bit more time with the diversion. Then he crossed to the darkest part
of the garage and hid his phone in the seat cushion of a tug parked in one of the service bays. He searched for weapons and found a heavy three-and-a-half-foot torque wrench and a fire extinguisher. The footsteps were heading toward the garage now, so he crept into a corner near his hidden phone and waited.

  The man approached the door to the garage and a landing light briefly illuminated his face, an expressionless mask with black eyes. The point of no return, Kennedy thought. Even if he had second thoughts about killing the guy, he no longer had a choice. There was only one way out. The man crept inside quietly, holding his gun in one hand and the smartphone he was using to track Kennedy in the other. He stopped short next to the baggage tug where Kennedy’s phone was hidden and checked his device. A thin slit of a grin spread across his bloodless lips, and he put the device away.

  Kennedy’s heart was exploding in his chest. It would be a matter of seconds before he was discovered. He had to move. The man was less than ten feet away. When the man got down on a knee to look under the tugs, Kennedy knew that would be his best chance at catching him in a position of vulnerability. He ripped the pin from the fire extinguisher—a heavy industrial dry-chemical unit for oil and gas fires—and blasted the man from behind. The assassin tried to turn and fire but the high-pressure powder mixture hit his eyes and face like a sandblaster, blinding him and knocking him down.

  Kennedy ducked, anticipating the guy’s instinct to fire his gun at whatever was in front of him. He emptied his mag into the back wall and was struggling to load another when Kennedy stood and swung the torque wrench as hard as he could at the man’s head. The dense steel ratchet assembly struck him in the left temple and spun him around. He dropped the gun and fell hard to the floor. Blood was gushing from his head, and his feet were twitching. Then he was still. Kennedy stood there, unable to tear his eyes away from the grisly scene, unable to breathe.

  Another flashlight beam shined in Kennedy’s eyes and he looked up, dazed. There were three men dressed in military black ops garb, with helmets, goggles, and small tactical machine guns, standing at the entrance of the maintenance garage. The one shining the light on Kennedy lifted his goggles. It was Best. Kennedy started to speak, but Best signaled him to keep his mouth shut and sat him down in a dark corner on a bucket. Kennedy watched as they wrapped the dead man, the wrench, and the man’s gun in sheets of nonreflective black plastic, secured with matte-black tape.

  Then they covered the blood on the garage floor with powder, which congealed it into piles of mealy black lumps, like clumped cat litter. The men swept all of that into more plastic bags, and the garage was clean, like it never happened.

  The entire process took less than fifteen minutes.

  A refrigerated airline catering truck pulled up with its lights off and they loaded all the plastic parcels into the back. Kennedy and Best got in front and the other men in back. The driver was wearing an airport catering company uniform. Best yanked off his helmet and top pullover, revealing the same uniform underneath. He pulled Kennedy’s satellite phone from his pocket and handed it back to him as they drove slowly across the apron, headed for the terminal.

  “We’ll drop you at the Jetway door. Mary is probably expecting you to come back through her office before you leave. I’ll pick you up in another vehicle at Arrivals door seven in ten minutes. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Best shined a UV light on Kennedy’s clothes.

  “What’s that?”

  “Looking for blood.”

  He found a couple of spots on Kennedy’s pants and sprayed them with an aerosol. They dried quickly to a crumbly powder and Best brushed them off. He looked at Kennedy’s face.

  “Snap out of it,” Best said. “You can’t go back in there with the thousand-­yard stare, okay? Here, take this.”

  Best handed him a blue tablet.

  “What is it?”

  “Xanax. It’ll even you out.”

  Kennedy swallowed the pill.

  “Stop here,” Best said to the driver.

  They pulled up to the Jetway door Kennedy had used to access the ramps. He got out and walked up the stairs. The Xanax started kicking in and he felt like he could breathe again. The fog lifted in his head. He walked back into the terminal and looked at his watch. He’d been out there a little over an hour, not long enough for Mary to get suspicious. When he got back to her office, the place was empty. His workbag and her coat and purse were still next to her desk. Kennedy slipped the security cards she’d given him out of his pocket, wiped them for prints, and put them back in her purse.

  He didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye, so he called her cell. It rang in a nearby room—a loud pop music ringtone—typical Mary choice. When it went to voice mail, he called it again and followed the sound. It was coming from a room at the end of the hallway with AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY on the door.

  “Mary?” he called out. “You in there?”

  No reply. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.

  “I know I don’t have clearance for this room but—”

  When he opened the door, he saw it was a storage closet. He turned on the light. Mary was sitting on the floor with her back up against some storage shelves.

  “Mary?”

  She didn’t answer. Kennedy moved closer and crouched down next to her. Her lips were blue. Her eyes were wide and staring.

  She was dead.

  Lentz was closing in. It was almost as if he were staring at Kennedy through Mary’s lifeless eyes, telling him he hadn’t seen anything yet.

  BOSTON

  Day 49

  The plane transporting Juarez and Trudeau disappeared from radar two hours ago and crashed in the Ural mountains.”

  It was nearly 5:00 A.M. at the Boston safe house in Beacon Hill and Alia was briefing Kennedy, Love, Nuri, and Best on their grim operational status. The sky outside was a mottled slate color, threatening any number of frigid, wet attacks. She informed them that she had just finished cleaning up the mess at Logan Airport. Her scrub crew had managed to retrieve the body of Mary, the TSA chief, before the police could find it. Now Mary was in her car at the bottom of the Charles River, just off Memorial Drive. With her blood alcohol level and a prior DUI, accidental death wouldn’t be a tough sell to the local cops.

  But that was the least of their concerns. An hour after Mary was wrapped up, Alia had received a call from Langley about Juarez and Trudeau, followed by satellite images of an airplane crash site, which she was showing the team as they sat around a conference table, stunned and speechless. She zoomed in on the wreckage. It was strewn across a quarter mile of rugged, snow-covered mountains.

  “It fell from its cruising altitude of eighteen thousand feet in two pieces,” she explained, “suggesting a midair explosion. Even if, by some miracle, they survived, temperatures are well below freezing at the crash site, with no emergency services for thousands of miles.”

  “I thought they left Russia days ago,” Kennedy said. “Langley is just learning about their plane going down now?”

  “They had laid over in a city called Surgut.” She showed them remote Surgut in the Khanty-Mansi province on a sat map. “Juarez’s plan was to acquire a new aircraft there to ensure they couldn’t be tracked on their way back to Paris.”

  Kennedy could no longer keep silent about the intel Trudeau had sent him. Lentz was gunning for them, now that they knew his secret, and everyone in Red Carpet deserved to know.

  “Alia,” Kennedy said, “tell them about the nukes.”

  Alia stopped cold, staring at him in disbelief.

  “What’s he talking about?” Nuri asked.

  “Kennedy, I know you’re under a lot of strain, but I would advise you to allow me to finish this briefing.”

  “Trudeau found out Lentz had bought twenty-five Russian RA-115s—miniaturized nukes weighing fifty to sixty pounds�
�from the arms dealers,” Kennedy said, ignoring her. “They’re called ‘suitcase nukes’ because they can easily be transported in a suitcase or backpack. Each of them has the firepower of six to ten kilotons of TNT, only a few kilotons less than one of the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima.”

  “Why didn’t we receive this intel?” Best asked.

  “You know the protocols with these types of weapons,” Alia said coldly. “And Trudeau clearly didn’t follow them.”

  “Trudeau sent the intel to Juarez and me. He felt like someone other than Alia and him needed to know.”

  “That wasn’t his call to make,” Alia said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Love asked, looking at Kennedy, fearful.

  “He wasn’t supposed to know,” Alia said.

  “And I was hoping you were going to tell the team,” Kennedy retorted.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Alia said.

  “How does World War Three work, Alia?” Best asked bitterly. “What’s the fucking protocol that won’t mean shit while we all burn?”

  A line had been crossed. It was one thing for the others to question procedures, but Best was a soldier. He was supposed to follow orders to the bitter end. Kennedy felt like they were rapidly approaching a meltdown in Alia’s leadership viability.

  “If Lentz was able to do this to Trudeau and Juarez, we’re dead,” Love said.

  “You got that right,” Nuri said. “I’m just glad someone had the balls to tell us the truth.” She nodded to Kennedy.

  The room was quiet. Alia switched off the projector and poured herself a drink. Kennedy wanted to quit, to fold in the face of absurd odds. But he knew he couldn’t. He knew he’d gone well past the point of no return. Doing anything other than stopping Lentz was nonnegotiable. He needed to be the leader he’d been asked to be.

  Alia finally spoke. “As of now, I’m suspending all Red Carpet operations for twenty-four hours while I go back to DC to discuss the next steps with my superiors.”

  Kennedy could feel her closing herself off to the team. She had no intention of coming back to Boston. He couldn’t fight her. He had to reel her in.