by Mike Ryan
“Hopefully it’s that simple.”
“Things are as simple or as hard as we make them.”
“In some cases.”
Jones lifted his fingers, as if to say he had it under control. “It’ll be fine.”
“I hope so. For Chris’ sake. ‘Cause he’ll be the one on the front line and if things go bad out there because we got a loose cannon in our midsts, he’ll be the one that takes in on full-blast.”
“And I am fully aware of that. But I don’t think we have to worry about that. Like I said, Paxton is rough around the edges, but he’ll come around. I’m fully confident in that.”
14
Haley and Phillips were sitting in their car, just down the street from the soon-to-be robbery location. They had a good eye on the entrance. They split their concentration between the convenience store and the information in front of them, which had the pictures of the three men likely to rob the place. Phillips shook his head.
“Look at these guys. Look like they’re about twenty-one, twenty-two years old. You’d think they’d have something better to do.”
“There’s no age limit on stupidity,” Haley replied.
“You can say that again. Plenty of it going around. Must be contagious.”
“Sometimes it seems that way.” He tried to keep his answers brief, not really interested in small talk with the new guy.
“We gonna wait until these guys show up or get in there ahead of time?”
“Well, the problem with going in first is if we’re in there too long, then we’re the ones people start getting suspicious of, thinking we’re just milling around.”
Phillips looked at his watch. “Only five minutes to go. We could just trade off. One of us goes in for a few minutes, then comes out and the other one goes in. That way we have a presence in there.”
Haley didn’t want to admit it, but that actually sounded like a good idea. He let out a sigh and started nodding. “Yeah, OK. I’ll go in first.”
“Let me have it.”
“You should be watching and learning as much as possible. I’ll go in first. If I come out and give you a signal, then it’s your turn.”
Phillips made a face, but was willing to play the rookie for a while. “Yeah, all right. I’ll wait near that hydrant by the front.”
“OK.”
Both men checked their weapons, concealed them, then got out of the car and started walking towards the store. Phillips went over near the fire hydrant and pulled out his phone, pretending to make himself look busy. Haley went into the store and started walking around, going down every aisle. The store wasn’t especially big. It was just a neighborhood mom-and-pop shop that probably just edged over a thousand square feet. It wouldn’t take long for Haley to get through it, but he stopped and looked at a few products to stretch the time out. After being in there for about five minutes, he finally grabbed a couple of sodas and went up to the counter to pay. He went outside and instantly located Phillips. He made a motion with his hand, then Phillips took his turn and walked in.
Haley walked a little further down the street, finding a small bench to sit on, not wanting to set up directly outside the front entrance. A couple more minutes went by. Then Haley noticed a car pull up right outside the store, in front of the hydrant. Three men quickly got out and rushed into the store. He immediately got up and started walking over there.
Inside the store, Phillips was in the back, but immediately heard the commotion by the front register. One of the armed men was giving the owner of the store the business.
“Let’s go, pops! Open the register!”
While the one man was busy getting the money from the register, another of the men stayed near the front door as a lookout. The third man started roaming the store, making sure nobody interfered. Phillips put his eyes on the third man before the robber got eyes on him. Phillips took out his gun and immediately fired, putting two rounds into the man’s chest. As he fell to the ground, Phillips stepped over him and quickly put his sights on the man at the register. The man was standing there, almost like he was frozen, surprised to hear the gunshots, though he was moving his head around, like he was trying to figure out what happened. After a few seconds, the man finally turned his body, seeing Phillips coming up on him. He turned to fire, but Phillips beat him to it. Another shot to the chest, another man down. Phillips then looked at the man at the door and was ready to fire, but that man was having none of it. He flew right out of the store.
Just as Haley was getting to the front window, the front door flew open, and a man came running right past him.
“Get him!” Phillips yelled.
Haley took out his gun, but the man was already by him and halfway inside the car by now. Haley kept eyes on him as he started the car and took off. Phillips came out of the store.
“Why didn’t you get him?”
“Happened a little faster than I expected,” Haley answered.
“You gotta keep up, man. I had everything under control. I got two of them, all you had to do was get the last one. He ran right out to you.”
“Excuse me, Doc Holliday, I didn’t realize I was walking into the O.K. Corral here. I just thought we were trying to prevent a robbery.”
“And we did. Well, I did. I don’t know what you were doing.”
Haley wanted to respond, but thought it was better not to, and took the high road. He simply turned around and started walking back to the car. Phillips followed.
“What? Are you telling me I did something wrong here?”
Haley got in the car. Part of him wanted to just drive off and leave his new partner there, though he somehow had enough restraint to wait for Phillips to get in. As Haley began driving, Phillips kept pestering him with questions. He could tell Haley was agitated, though he couldn’t figure out why. As far as Phillips was concerned, everything went down well. Except for the third man getting away part. But that wasn’t on him.
“Why are you looking so miserable?”
Tired of giving him the silent treatment, Haley finally responded. “Because you went off half-cocked doing your own thing that might not have even been necessary.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Was it really necessary to shoot those guys in there? Did you even try another way? Or did you just see them and start blasting away?”
Phillips shrugged and leaned back, not sure the purpose of the question. “What difference does it make? They’re bad guys. They had guns. I shot them. Now they’re done, nobody else has to worry about getting robbed, we’ll never have to deal with them again, and we’re good to go so we can deal with something else.”
“Oh, it’s just that simple, huh?”
“Yes! Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because you don’t get it, that’s why.”
“Well why don’t you enlighten me?”
“Because we shoot or kill when we have to. When it’s the last resort. It’s not our first option.”
“It might not be your first option, pal, but when I see people with guns, I don’t mess around trying to talk them to death.” Haley shook his head. “What? I don’t understand what you’re so hung up about? It’s not like we just shot up a bunch of boy scouts there.”
“The point is, they weren’t hardened criminals. They were young kids. You said it yourself. They were twenty-one, twenty-two. They weren’t lifers.”
“So? What difference does that make? They’re adults. If you’re gonna be an adult and make the wrong decisions, you’ll pay the price like anyone else does.”
“But maybe they didn’t have to. If you had the jump on them, you could’ve gotten them to throw down their guns.”
“And do what? Talk to them for an hour about the bad things they’re doing with their life and try to turn their lives around? Sorry, man, I’m not in the counseling business. If you wanna do that, bring a priest along or something. But I ain’t got that kind of time.”
“It’s not even about that,” Ha
ley said. “That’s just one of the things.”
“So what are the others?”
“The public in this city, not even in the city, in the entire area, including suburbs, are largely on our side. When they hear of our exploits, they’re generally in favor of us. But we try to keep a low profile.”
“Why bother? If everyone knows about us, why try to hide it?”
“Because the more we’re known, the more there will be people out there trying to track us through our movements.”
“What kind of people?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, there are police in this city.”
“From what I’ve heard, they don’t look very hard for you guys.”
“The police in this area are split towards us. There’s a lot that actually supports what we do and would probably look the other way if they saw us, because they know we’re actually helping them to prevent crime. We’re not intentionally trying to increase their workload by dropping bodies all over the place.”
“It’s someone they won’t have to deal with later doing the same thing.”
“But there are also police out there, including the ones at the top, who believe we don’t help, and they’d like to get us out of the picture. And if we continually drop bodies everywhere, they’ll help to persuade others to their cause.”
Phillips shrugged. “That’s their business, man. We can’t be worrying about that when we’re doing our business.”
“Let me put this another way. If the body count increases by a large margin because you’re out here playing Wyatt Earp, that’s gonna put pressure on the politicians and the police to look into it. And that means that they’ll actually be out there looking for us, putting out news conferences, putting our pictures out there for everyone to see, and that severely limits our actions and what we can do. They’ve done it before. They’ve backed off on it lately because there’s just not a lot of interest behind it. And why do you think that is? Because we mostly stay behind the scenes and we don’t go around blindly killing everyone that gets in our way.”
“So am I supposed to talk sweet nothings into everyone’s ear that I come across?”
“No, sometimes using a gun is necessary. Sometimes it’s the only way. But sometimes, there’s a way to diffuse the situation without blowing holes through everyone that’s near you. And that’s the difference you’ll need to learn. We’re not in a foreign country, we’re not in North Korea or Iraq or deep behind enemy lines somewhere where you gotta kill everyone you come across to make it out alive.”
Phillips let out a loud sigh as he shifted around in his seat and looked out the window. The good feeling he had about the work he did was slowly fading away. He got the feeling the others would give him a similar talking to. He was already starting to question whether this was the work he wanted to do. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this type of job. Maybe he did belong in some foreign country, deep undercover somewhere where his life hung in the balance with each move he made. After a few minutes of silence, Phillips started up with more questions.
“So what would you have done if our positions were reversed?”
Haley thought for a few seconds and sighed. “I dunno, maybe nothing. Maybe that outcome was the only one possible. But if my gun’s on them, I’d at least give them the chance to surrender first. If they drop their guns, you can talk to them for a minute and get a feel for what to do next. Maybe they’re just scared out of their minds and you think it’s an isolated incident and this is what they need to go straight. Maybe they open their mouths and you think they’re a bunch of punks who’ll never learn. In that case, maybe you just tie them up somewhere, call the police, and let them deal with them after that. They’ll be going to prison.”
“And if they decide they’re not in a talkative mood?”
Haley shrugged. “If you tell them to drop it and they decide not to, well, you’ve still got the drop on them. We’re not amateurs. We’re professionals. We’re supposed to be the best. We’ve been in the toughest situations all over the world for a long time. We’ve seen everything there is to see, and we’ve been up against tougher opponents than a bunch of young kids looking for fifty bucks out of a register. If we’ve got the drop on someone and they decide to come up firing, they won’t have a chance of hitting us. We’ll still drop them before they get a chance to pull the trigger.”
Phillips sighed again, but nodded. Maybe he actually understood after all. But understanding was one thing, putting it into practice was another. Some people just had a quicker trigger finger than others. Haley and Phillips continued talking about the situation they just had, as well as throwing around some hypothetical ones, just to see how each of them would respond. Needless to say, most of the time, they would have handled it differently. But Haley continued trying to explain how the team did things and why it was different from the way Phillips liked to do it or would do it.
By the time they got back to the office, Haley walked in faster than the others. Phillips was dragging his feet, knowing he was going to get an earful. On the way in, Haley texted Jones to let him know the result of the mission, though he didn’t say how that came to be. He left the details out. He’d say those in person. It was too much to text.
As soon as Haley went in, he found Recker and Jones by the desk and started telling them the details. Phillips walked into the office a minute or two later. As soon as he did, he felt all eyes staring at him. He closed the door behind him, getting the feeling that he was about to get scolded.
As Haley spoke about the incident, Phillips didn’t interrupt. He let him tell the story exactly as he felt was needed. He figured interrupting wouldn’t help his case, anyway. They were going to lambast him no matter what, he thought. Phillips just slinked over to the couch and leaned back, waiting for the criticisms to come rolling in. Once Haley finished, he also talked about their conversations on the way back in the car.
“So you’ve already explained to Mr. Phillips our preferred way of operating?” Jones asked.
“I did. And I went over a few different scenarios to hopefully guide him into the way we do things.”
“Good. Well I guess there isn’t much else to say about this then, is there?”
Haley looked at Recker. “No, I guess not.”
Recker looked at Jones. “I suppose that covers it.”
“Very good,” Jones replied. “Paxton, is there anything you’d like to add?”
Phillips threw a hand into the air. “No, not really.”
Jones nodded. “Uh, Chris, why don’t you continue showing Paxton some of the computer systems?”
Haley looked at his two partners for a second. “Uh, OK.” He then walked around the desk.
Jones got up and walked toward the door. “I think I’m going to take a walk for a few minutes. I’ll be back soon.”
Phillips walked over to the desk. Recker got up and held the chair out for him. “Here, take my seat.” Recker then tapped Haley on the shoulder. “I’m gonna step out for a few minutes too. Let me know if something pops up.”
“You got it,” Haley replied.
Recker went outside and quickly found Jones walking toward the end of the building. He rushed over to him to catch up, quickly getting side by side with him.
“Was that your cue for us to talk privately?” Recker asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Want me to bug off?”
“No.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Just wondering if I did make a mistake.”
“With Phillips?” Recker asked.
“Yes. Here I was thinking that I was hoping that he’d fit in seamlessly, like Chris did.”
“Well that’s always the hope.”
“But all this time I’ve been thinking that’s the way it should happen. Like Chris was the usual way, the normal way. But what if he isn’t? What if Chris was the exception, and it’s really not as easy as I thought it would be?”
Recker nodded, seeing
what he was getting at. “Like maybe you thought they’d all be home runs and maybe you could stretch a single into a triple with this one? And now you’re thinking maybe the home run was a fluke and maybe it’s all a bunch of singles and strikeouts?”
“I guess maybe the metaphor works.”
“Hey, there isn’t anything about this line of work that’s easy. It’s not easy physically, it’s not easy emotionally, and it’s not easy mentally. Things happen fast and hard out there, and it’s not a game for the weak. If there’s one thing about this guy I can tell, is that he’s not weak.”
“But will he be what we need him to be?”
“The only answer to that question is time.”
“I imagine your thoughts on him haven’t changed after this latest outing?”
“Well, he’s got the skills for the job. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. He’s capable. The thing that is really concerning is that he seems really quick on the trigger.”
“Coming from you that is…”
“I know, I know. I’ve got a reputation for settling things the easy way, but even I’m not as fast on the trigger as him.”
“It was partly in jest on my part. I know at times over the years I’ve given you a bit of a hard time over the way you’ve handled things, but I have always known that you handled it the best way possible. I never thought you killed when it wasn’t really necessary.”
“You know, between the CIA and here, I’ve seen a lot of guys who were just like him.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Recker shrugged. “It’s neither, depending on the circumstances. When it comes time to pulling the trigger, there’s a few variables at play. There’s guys who think slow and act slow, think fast but act slow, guys who think slow but act fast, and guys who think fast and act fast.”
“And which category would you put Paxton in?”
