by R. A. McGee
Miri saw her pistol on the ground near Lucy. She went for it, and Keever dived at the same time. In the scramble, Miri ended up on her back, Keever on top of her.
Years of training left her prepared for this position. Miri wrapped her legs around the man’s waist, utilizing a Brazilian jiu-jitsu guard. Keever tried to punch Miri, but she arched her back and pushed him away, preventing him from landing any punches to her face.
Keever changed tactics, swinging strong punches at the side of her torso, slamming into her ribcage over and over.
Miri felt something crack inside her. She used her legs to pull Keever close to her, to mitigate the strikes he could throw. She slammed fists and elbows into his blind side. Over and over she hit the man as he struggled to get free.
Keever’s arms went limp for a moment, then Miri felt him grab her shirt on both sides near her ribs.
Their position shifted and Miri felt herself being hoisted into the air. As Keever lifted her, she unwrapped her legs to untangle herself from him, but he caught a leg and held it as he slammed her down onto the linoleum floor.
Miri’s head slammed off the floor, and everything went black as she lost consciousness.
What felt like seconds later, she blinked her eyes open, throwing punches out of instinct. She saw Keever, with Lucy slung over his shoulder, walking through the open doorway of the trailer.
“Stop,” Miri said weakly. “Bring her back.”
Keever turned and fished for something in his pocket. His face was already swelling and bloodied. He flashed his smile. The brilliant smile was now marred, and blood stained his teeth.
Miri could have sworn that one of them was missing.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Keever said. He tossed something into the trailer. It rolled in and came to a stop on the pizza boxes.
Miri tracked it with her eyes, recognizing the familiar pineapple shape of a fragmentation grenade. Her eyes darted back to Keever, who slammed the door behind him.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said.
She scrambled to her feet and dived behind the kitchen counter, keenly aware of the heat from the explosion, the concussion in her chest, and then nothing else.
Forty-Seven
Clark looked across the table, watching David Butterfield cough and sputter back into consciousness. The man raised his face from the shabby kitchen table, eyes wild, looking around until he saw Clark and stopped.
“Nice to see you again, David.”
“Why the hell are you in my house?”
“I need to talk to you about something and I wanted to make sure I have your attention.”
Butterfield leaned back in the cheap metal chair and breathed slowly.
Clark looked around while he waited for his former coworker to get his wits about him.
The inside of the small house looked like it was going through renovations. There was flooring half-ripped up, cabinets missing from the wall, and no stove. Clark turned toward the living room, where he could see pieces of drywall missing and bare studs exposed. Strangely, there were no signs of renovation implements: no stack of tiles for flooring, no rolls of carpet waiting, no pile of drywall.
Clark turned back to Butterfield. “You feeling better?”
“So you broke into my house just to choke me unconscious? I’ll admit you never made much sense to me, but that’s just ignorant.”
“Last time we had a conversation, it didn’t go so well.”
“You fractured my eye orbit.”
“You deserved it,” Clark said. “I wanted to make sure you aren’t feeling some kind of way about that before we talk.”
Butterfield touched his hand to his cheek. “I’m fine, asshole. What the hell do you want?”
“Straight to the point.”
“I’d rather be doing a thousand other things than talking to you, so spit it out and go.”
“Okay. Convince me that you didn't leak the information to Petrovsky and the Russians that got Miri kidnapped in Costa Rica.”
“Convince you?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck you. I don’t owe you anything. Who the hell do you think you are? I don’t work for Blackthorn anymore, so whatever you people have to say about me doesn’t matter.”
“We have that in common,” Clark said.
“What?”
“I don’t work for Blackthorn anymore either.”
Butterfield stared at Clark, then laughter rose up from his chest. The man laughed uncontrollably for nearly a minute, until his face was choked with redness and his eyes watered. “Are you kidding me?”
Clark didn’t say anything.
“You’re not kidding? Holy shit. Okay then. How did that happen? How did McHenry even let you leave? You were always the golden boy. ‘No one is as good as Clark. Why don’t you all try it Clark’s way?’ I even heard that old bastard say, with a straight face, that you were more dangerous than the plague. He loves you—or something close to it, at least. How did you quit?”
“I’m not here for that, I only want to ask about Miri. Can you prove to me that you had nothing to do with it?”
“Of course I can’t. They found the evidence they found and that was that. It didn’t matter that I’d never heard of Petrovksy until the Venezuela operation. Didn’t matter that I’ve never even heard of the bank where they said they found dirty money in my name. Nobody cared. I was the fall guy and just like that, I was out.”
“Why didn’t you try to have your uncle help? Everyone knows the only reason you even had the job was because McHenry wanted another senator to owe him a favor,” Clark said.
“First off, I resent the implication that I couldn’t have gotten the job on my own.”
“It’s not an implication, it’s the truth,” Clark said. “You’re a train wreck who should never have been allowed anywhere near Blackthorn.”
Butterfield leaned forward in his chair and pointed at Clark. “If you don’t think I tried to pull strings with my uncle, you’re even dumber than I thought. Of course I tried to get him to help, but he wouldn’t. He said it was too risky to get more involved. Told me it was all he could do to keep me out of jail for treason and that getting the job back was a no-go.”
“I’m still not convinced you didn’t do it, David,” Clark said.
Butterfield stood, and Clark slipped his hand under the front of his shirt. Butterfield raised his hands. “Easy, killer.” The man padded over to an insulated cooler on the floor, pulled out two bottles of beer, and set one on the table in front of Clark. “Figured you’ll want to open it yourself to be sure it wasn’t poisoned.”
Clark did, but didn’t drink the beer.
Butterfield took a big swig of his beer. “Convince you? Okay, here it goes. I hate your guts, Clark. I hate everything about you. I hate the fact that you showed up and everyone wouldn’t stop talking about how good you are. I hate the fact that some half-breed asshole—”
“Unless you want me to break the other side of your face, I suggest you tread carefully.”
“Shut up and let me finish. For some reason, that bothers me. It bothers me that I got stuck at HQ while you and the rest of the operators got to run around the world doing what I want to do. It bothers me that I’ve never gotten to kill anyone. Sure, I’ll admit it. Honestly, if I had a gun right now, I’d shoot you in the face, then bury you out back and never tell a soul.”
“And you wonder why I snuck into your house,” Clark said.
Butterfield shrugged. “That’s me being honest. If you think back on everything I’ve ever said or done, I’ve never lied. You may think I’m an asshole, but I’m an honest asshole.”
Clark didn’t say anything, weighing Butterfield’s words.
“It’s true. Just because I speak my mind doesn’t make me a traitor, any more than Miri Banks being Jewish makes her Moses. The things I’d do to that woman…” Butterfield feigned a shiver. “Not to mention how much it would piss you off. That’d be the best part.”
“Lie to yourself if you want to,” Butterfield said. “We all know it. Everyone can tell. Hell, it’s part of the reason why I split the two of you up so much. Just because I knew it would bother you. I say all that to say: if there was ever anyone I’d set up, it’d be you, you cocky piece of shit. But I didn’t and I wouldn’t, because that’s not what I do.”
Butterfield took another swig from his beer. “Not to mention the fact that my laptop didn’t even work.”
“What do you mean?”
“My Blackthorn laptop. The one they claimed I used to contact Petrovsky? That shit had been broken for months. I spilled a Jack and Coke on it one day and it shut off. I didn’t want to deal with the paperwork of getting a new one, so I just left it.”
“You never told anyone?” Clark said.
“Nah. The hell with that.”
“Do you still have it?”
Butterfield nodded. “Yeah, somewhere.” He stood and walked into the living room. Clark followed him, keeping a reasonable distance from the man.
Butterfield moved piles of things around his living room until he fished out a laptop bag. “Here. Look for yourself.” He tossed the bag at Clark, who caught it, but kept his eyes on Butterfield the entire time.
Clark threw it back. “Open it up.”
“Fine.” Butterfield plugged the laptop into an outlet above the counterless skeleton of a cabinet. He pressed the power button, but nothing happened. From where he was standing, Clark could see a brownish stain across the keyboard.
“Does that plug even work?” Clark said. “You don’t look like the best handyman.”
Butterfield shrugged and pulled a blender out of a box on the floor. He plugged it in above the laptop’s plug and the appliance fired to life. “The plug’s good. The laptop is roached.”
Clark motioned for Butterfield to take his seat again. “I believe you.”
“Just like that?”
“Let’s say we have some other corroboration.” Clark pulled out the thumb drive that Lucy had given him and set it on the table in front of him.
“What the hell’s this?” Butterfield said.
“Lucy Gordon pulled up some information that seems to exonerate you.”
“That little bitch is the one who found the evidence on me in the first place.”
“Shut up. Pull your drunken mind together and listen for a couple minutes. The stuff on this drive points toward you being innocent… and McHenry being guilty.”
“The Old Man?”
“Yes,” Clark said. “We need to make sure that this thumb drive gets into the right hands. The reason I came tonight was to find out if you can get your uncle to take a look at it. We need someone with enough juice to shut McHenry down.”
“Who cares about that? If McHenry made you that mad, just kill him. Problem solved.”
“This is why no one let you work with them, David. Think about the big picture. Sure, I can kill McHenry. Maybe. But then what? He knows that I know it was him. He’ll have a contingency in place for if he dies. Hell, he’d probably disavow me. I’d be on the run forever and that’s not something I’m interested in.
“The fact is, taking him down the right way is the only way to make sure that all of this is over. He goes away, I’m in the clear. Hell, maybe your uncle can swing the sword of nepotism and get you your job back. Think about it.”
Butterfield wrinkled his forehead in thought. “I can’t fault your logic.”
“That’s why we need you.” Clark handed the thumb drive over. “Take this and give it to your uncle. Tell him that McHenry is responsible for one of his own people being kidnapped, as well as the death of Samantha Keane.”
“Samantha Keane? But that’s…”
Clark looked down.
“Is your… I mean, is she dead?”
Clark nodded slowly. “You can see why this is important to me.”
Butterfield closed his hands around the thumb drive. “I’ll do it.”
“Good. We’re working on bringing in the hacker responsible. With him and the evidence, we should be able to pull it off.” Clark stood and started toward the front door.
“Hey Clark,” Butterfield said.
Clark looked over his shoulder.
“Listen, I’m sorry to hear about your old lady.”
“Thanks, David.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I still hate your guts.”
“I’d expect no less,” Clark said, and walked out of the house.
His phone rang as he reached the sidewalk.
“Miri? What’s up?”
Clark listened to a voice that wasn’t Miri’s.
“Okay. No, I understand. Which hospital? What the hell city is that in? No, I got it. What? Our relationship?”
Clark’s chest was heavy and he struggled to keep his composure. He squeezed the phone to steady it in his shaky hands.
“We’re family.”
Forty-Eight
Clark was rooted to his front lawn, townhome still in pristine condition. He watched as Samantha’s face stopped moving, porcelain frozen in time, and then it burned.
“This is all your fault.”
Clark woke with a start, momentarily confused as to where he was. The soft light of dawn was breaking through the window. Behind him were the faint but persistent beeps of an IV drip machine, complaining that it needed to be changed. He tried to push down the sinking feeling in his stomach.
Miri lay, a white sheet pulled up to her waist, faded hospital gown covering the rest of her. Her face was swollen, scratched and scraped and littered with bruises. Although he had averted his eyes for modesty’s sake when the nurses had changed her sheet earlier, he couldn’t help but notice the thick wrapping of bandages around her waist.
He leaned forward, chin on the plastic guard arm of the hospital bed, and slipped his hand through the opening to intertwine it with Miri’s. Her knuckles were battered and covered with blood that couldn’t possibly belong to her.
Clark placed his other hand on top of hers and sat there until his eyes closed again.
The fire being spit from the open door of his townhouse engulfed Samantha, and Clark screamed into the night for someone, anyone, to make it stop. For the first time, something was different. There was a pressure in his hand. He looked down and it was glowing, dull at first, then brighter, until the glow in his hand rivaled what was happening on the porch.
“This is all your—”
“Czerny!”
Clark sat up, face numb from the plastic railing he’d dozed on.
“Hey, you okay?” a weak voice said.
Clark looked down and Miri was squeezing his hand.
“They’re gonna kick you out of here if you keep screaming like that.”
“Maybe I want them to kick me out. Since I’m not leaving without you, we’ll both ditch this place, two for the price of one.”
A nurse with a furrowed brow poked her head into the curtain that surrounded Miri’s bed. She gave an admonishing glare, then disappeared.
“If that’s your plan, I think you're doing a damn fine job.”
Clark pulled his hand away. “How are you?”
“Tough as hell, that’s how I am. When’s the last time you got blown up?”
Clark thought for a moment, ready to give an actual answer.
“That was rhetorical, dummy.”
The two sat in silence for several moments. Clark found himself staring too hard into her eyes. It was a habit he had in the best of times, considering her different-colored eyes. Now, he also noticed the swelling around them and the greenish-blue hue of the area.
“What happened?”
“Me and Lucy went to meet the hacker.”
“How was he?”
“Like the movies. All alone in a trailer. Computers and take-out food everywhere. Super smart and nerdy. Lucy was smitten.”
Clark smiled, but it quickly faded. “Lucy? Where is she? Was she in the t
railer? I have to go get her.” He stood to his feet, but Miri interrupted his panic.
“She’s not there. She’s gone.”
“What the hell does that mean? Where did she go?”
“Keever,” Miri said, no need to elaborate.
Clark sat back down. “He did this to you?”
“Yeah. Fucker couldn’t take me, though. Had to drop a grenade in my lap and turn tail. Whatever you did to him, he’s unreasonably pissed off about it.”
Clark started to speak, then stopped.
“What, I don’t get the story? That’s the least you can do for me.”
Clark shook his head. “It’s like bringing up the past.”
“Your past is my present-day,” Miri said. “Besides, I think they’re due to resupply my morphine soon. Once they do that, I’m hitting that little red button until I pass out. Might as well tell me a bedtime story. I’m not going anywhere for a while and you can’t track Lucy at the moment.”
Clark leaned forward and folded his arms on the plastic railing of the bed, putting his chin on top of his forearms. “Keever is… a maniac. It’s really that simple. He tries to put on a show like he’s this really calm guy, but really he’s an asshole with so many issues, I don’t even know where to start.”
Miri didn’t say anything. Clark focused on the clear oxygen tube in her nose and kept going.
“A while back, I was doing some side work for the CIA. The Army would loan me out sometimes when the CIA needed to augment their force in a particular area of the world. I never really liked those spooks. Until recently, I always felt like Blackthorn was stable. Grounded. I knew what we stood for. I feel like that with the regular CIA as well. The rank and file agents, even the deep-cover guys we run into, they aren’t anything creepy or weird.
“But sometimes, we’d get these guys that would show up. No credentials, no badges, and for some reason, our chain of command would snap to it. They’d borrow a few of us Delta guys and set us loose to fix whatever the problem was.”
“Sounds like it’s right up your alley,” Miri said.
