Spying While Black

by Oliver Willis

  Thousands of people are going to die tonight. Unless…

  Elite secret agent Deena Marks is in a race against time and the elements to stop a rogue group of extremists and their sinister plot to plunge America into a race war of epic proportions.

  The clock is already ticking, and innocent men, women, and children will need Marks to bring her “A” game while she is caught up in the very real complications of Spying While Black.

  Spying While Black

  by Oliver Willis

  Dedicated To

  Paulette Rosemarie Lowe-Willis 1951-2015

  My beloved mother, who saw the writer inside before anyone else did

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  Chapter 1

  Rome, Italy

  From her vantage point on top of the building, Deena Marks can see the tourists lazily walking down Rome’s Via dei Lucchesi, lazily winding their way through the ancient city. Many of them are headed to the famous Trevi Fountain, the 86-foot high Baroque sculpture depicting Oceanus, the god of the sea presiding over sea creatures, nymphs, and the water itself.

  The tourists’ only concerns are making sure their gelato desserts don’t melt onto their hands and stick and cramming all of Rome’s historic sights into their travel schedules.

  Marks has no time for that frivolity. She’s never been to Rome off the clock and coming here for a real vacation is somewhere on her ever-growing bucket list ahead of the Australian Outback but below a week at a Maui bungalow.

  Instead, through her binoculars the 26-year-old black woman is watching for activity on the other side of the street in a very expensive penthouse condominium. She is peeping on the luxury property on the behalf of the American taxpayer, who pay her salary.

  Marks is a top covert agent for Omega Division, an intelligence agency with the mandate to seek out and neutralize the biggest threats facing America.

  The man who currently inhabits the penthouse is one such threat.

  Not long ago, Gorman Blanc was a legitimate American political figure. He worked his way up the food chain, going from a campaign volunteer to political aide to campaign manager to presidential campaign chairman in just over a decade.

  But even whispering into the ear of the leader of the free world was not enough to satisfy his lust for power and influence, and after a series of public clashes with the president – including leaking his embarrassing personal habits to the Washington Post and New York Times, Blanc found himself back on the open market.

  Since then he has taken his influence and resume and put it to use on behalf of unsavory European fascists. Sympathetic to their bigoted cause and more than happy to fill his bank accounts with their currency, Blanc now finds himself knee deep in a network of groups sworn to upend the so-called “new world order” in favor of their twisted and demented dreams.

  Blanc and the men he works for want a world dominated by those with supposedly “pure,” white, European blood and if that means mass murder it does not trouble them in the slightest.

  It was the embrace of this mission and subsequent actions to execute it that attracted the attention of Omega Division.

  Unlike their other intelligence brethren, Omega Division has more freedom to act on threats. It’s chain of command is short and goes directly to the president, with minimal congressional oversight.

  The mandate is quick, decisive, clean mission execution with no entanglements that can be traced back to the American government.

  Deena Marks excels in service of this mission.

  She catches sight of Blanc. He is a corpulent man who always sports a scraggly beard that grows only in patches. Eternally disheveled, Blanc’s appearance is deceptive. Marks has extensive information on his habits and has been watching him for long enough to know he loves the finer things in life, but he refuses to dress the part.

  The doorman for his building even turned him away a few times before he learned his face. He assumed Blanc was simply a vagrant, rather than the tenant for the property’s most exclusive dwelling.

  As per usual, Blanc is on the phone. Marks is continually amazed by how much of his life Blanc spends on his device. Far more than the average modern person, Blanc is always expounding on his personal philosophies to anyone who will listen. Having cultivated many reporter contacts during his time in American politics, Blanc is still sought out for his zany quotes.

  Marks has kept tabs on this too and has repeatedly rolled her eyes at his push for “the return of the European ethnostate.”

  At least the Nazis just came out and said they want to kill the Jews, she thinks. Blanc instead wraps his racism in the almost benign language of the political consultant. If Hitler did political spin, it wouldn’t sound too different from Blanc’s sales spiel.

  Through her earpiece Marks can hear snippets of Blanc’s conversation. The last time he went out for an expensive five-star lunch, the Rome office of Omega swept in and bugged his condo. He regularly has the property swept for listening devices, but Marks has been hoping to get a lead during the window of time between the regular hunt for bugs.

  So far, nothing.

  She exhales and listens to Blanc’s self-aggrandizement echo off the marble floor of his quarters. He is more full of himself than most, and he is not shy about patting himself on the back.

  Her reports back to headquarters in suburban Maryland have been terse one-paragraph summaries of Blanc’s coming and going, and yet in even in those micro-missives Marks has made it clear she’d rather be spending her time elsewhere.

  She understands the need for methodical investigation and is in fact the best in the agency at it, but keeping her tactical skills bottled up is still annoying and almost physical painful.

  Marks craves action.

  In the distance, she hears a soft whump-whump-whump sound. Immediately she knows what it is.

  Helicopter approaching. She never heard anything about this in his conversations. She thinks back, trying to figure out which transmission he used to arrange the aerial encounter.

  Marks pulls close to the side of her building, hoping she blends in enough with the shadow to avoid the pilot’s line of sight.

  He passes overhead, and she can feel a gust of wind push her hair back.

  The helicopter goes in for a landing.

  Chapter 2

  Gorman Blanc is now on the roof, having exhausted himself with the short trip up the steps. Below, some tourists look up to watch the helicopter land.

  They chalk it up to just one weird thing they saw in Italy without thinking much more about it.

  Marks watches from her vantage point. Blanc opens his arms wide, hugging the passenger as he steps out of the vehicle. He kisses each cheek.

  The passenger doesn’t ring any alarm bells as Marks focuses on his face. Tall, angular, clean shaven white man with platinum blonde hair cut into a buzz cut.

  He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a small brown box. Marks moves her binoculars to follow the box as he hands it to Blanc.

  As the man extends his hands to Blanc, for a split second his sleeve pulls back and reveals a tattoo of an Iron Cross with a red outline.

  Bingo, she thinks.

  Omega Division has entrusted Deena Marks to act on her instincts. Time and again she has proven in the field to be a good judge of a situation. She has wide latitude for how and when she can respond and has been given the trust of the U.S. government, and by extension its citizens, to act.

  The tattoo, Blanc, and the helicopter combined with the package are enough.

  She reaches to her waist and pulls out what looks like a chunky handgun. But at either end of the barrel is a metal claw hook. Marks raises t
he device above her head and fires.

  Instantly, the hooks shoot out in opposite directions. They are propelled by the powerful combustion in the center of the device. Each hook has a trail of rope attached to it. The claw behind her embeds itself deep into the stone wall of the building she’s standing on.

  The other makes a metal thump as it latches on to the outer wall of the helicopter.

  “What?” The pilot asks.

  Blanc and the tattooed passenger also look up in surprise.

  Marks presses a button on the side of the handle, then jumps up into the air. The mechanical pulleys inside the device begin rapidly spinning, rolling along the newly formed rope line. In seconds Marks hangs above the street, hundreds of feet up in the air.

  Most of the tourists still don’t notice.

  The pulleys spin faster and in seconds, Marks is now over the roof of Blanc’s building. He and the Passenger seem frozen in surprise.

  Marks lets go of her device and as she falls, she reaches to her hip holster and pulls out her primary weapon, a Sig Sauer P226 handgun.

  Two quick squeezes of the trigger later and the pilot is dead, his limp head falling on top of the vehicle’s controls.

  “Who the hell?” the Passenger asks.

  “Kill her,” Blanc orders.

  The Passenger reaches into his jacket, reaching for a shoulder holster.

  Marks fires, hitting him on his shoulder. He shrieks, and Marks can see that his jacket is now damp with blood. He falls to his knees.

  Blanc pulls the wooden box in tight against his body. He watches Marks walk towards him. He turns and begins to run toward the stairwell.

  She runs, focused on the brown box and securing it.

  Blanc reaches out and slaps a button next to the entrance to the stairs. A large metal plate slides into the spot where the doorway is.

  “Damn it,” she says. Defensive countermeasures, the sort of off-the books improvement the obscenely rich can add to their luxury. Most people in either Rome or America can’t afford blast doors.

  Marks stops and turns around. In her head she goes over the schematics of the condo. The plans didn’t have the metal door so everything stemming from it is an educated guess at best.

  She reaches behind her and into the small tourist-style mini-backpack she has been wearing.

  Marks pulls out one grenade, releases the pin with her right hand, and throws it a few feet away. She ducks down to avoid the blast.

  A few seconds tick off as the grenade arcs through the air and then it lands on the roof.

  A loud explosion follows, and a gigantic hole forms going straight through the building material to the room below.

  Without hesitation Marks runs to it and looks. Blanc’s condo is now covered in dirt and debris. Grey smoke wafts up from the explosion site.

  Without hesitation, Marks jumps in.

  Chapter 3

  Blanc is on the floor, sprawled out, in shock. He can’t believe what has happened to his home. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of art, tapestries, and objects are destroyed or damaged beyond repair. His meticulously curated collection is in pieces, and the catalyst for this mayhem has just landed on her sneakers a few feet away from him.

  For a split second he takes her in. He is a man obsessed with the Übermensch, the mythical “over man,” the Aryan ideal who is owed dominion over Earth. Blanc has dedicated this late phase of his life to the triumph of this class.

  Yet the shadow of a black woman falls across his face while his monuments to the supposedly superior European culture were shattered from her violence.

  It angers him, and he can feel the bile roil his stomach and he wants to vomit.

  No time.

  Blanc grips the wooden box tightly. Priorities. He must keep the content secure.

  He leans back and against a wall. His shirt is slick from sweat and it eases his path up. He reaches out a hand, patting the wall while searching for a bump he knows is there. In his panic, amidst the ruins, he is having trouble finding it. He has gone over this a thousand times but now his sense of touch is failing him.

  He looks up and the woman has now fully gained her balance. She raises both hands, holding her jet-black gun directly at him.

  Blanc gulps. He is not used to getting his hands dirty. He has been more than happy to be the man in the shadows, directing others to execute on his behalf.

  The decision to take delivery of the device now feels like hubris, in retrospect. He clearly overestimated the security of his operation and gambled and lost. Now he sits at the mercy of an inferior, her cold green eyes trained on him.

  She has no sympathy. This is clear. He saw what happened to the pilot and the passenger. This is not the usual game-playing with international law and INTERPOL and arrests and the assertion of rights.

  “Put it down,” she orders. Her voice is flat and monotone. Despite the ferocity of the previous few minutes, she is calm and on mission. Blanc wonders which agency she works for. Her stance is law enforcement style, while she shows no hesitation. An elite.

  Finally, Blanc feels the bulge in the wall he has been looking for. He tries not to grin.

  ***

  Marks is about to squeeze the trigger and end this. She would have done so already but her uncertainty about the content of the box makes her err on the side of caution.

  The time for figuring out how she got to this strange spot is later. For now, she is focused on defusing the situation, securing the asset and neutralizing Blanc.

  She sees the slight twitch of his hand resting against the wall. It is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it motion. Marks squeezes her trigger. The gun fires.

  At the same moment a panel behind Blanc quickly opens up, one end receding into the wall, while the other half of it extends into the room. The effect is that of a trap door, like one seen in an old horror movie. As it continues along its path, it sweeps Blanc along with it, out of her line of fire.

  But as the wall spins, Marks’ gun fires. The bullet hits Blanc on the wrist. He yelps. A stream of blood shoots out. He drops the box to the ground, out of the path of the rotating wall panel.

  In seconds he is out of sight, on the other side of the wall. The panel is almost invisible except that the paint on the end now facing outward is slightly darker. There hasn’t been any sun or light beating down on it.

  “Shit,” Marks says.

  She bends down and picks up the box. She kicks at the wall panel, but it doesn’t budge. She feels along the wall where Blanc moved his fingers but can’t quite find the switch.

  In frustration she aims at the panel and shoots five bullets into it.

  She kicks the area around her newly created bullet holes and breaks through to the other side. A few more kicks and she has created enough room to shimmy her body through.

  It is a small, dark room, with just a few extra inches beyond what is needed for the whole wall panel to swing through. No sign of Blanc.

  At the corner there is the top of a ladder made out of thick metal. A panic room with an escape route. Money buys a way out.

  Marks slides down the ladder.

  She lands in a small puddle of water. Looking around it is instantly clear that this is some sort of access tunnel, probably left over from hundreds of years ago as part of an ancient sewer system. There are at least eight tunnels that branch off from where she stands.

  In the distance Marks hears an engine gunning from a far-off car. She runs down one tunnel, but it simply leads into blackness. The only other sound is the splashing sound her shoes make as she runs through the puddles.

  She stops and holds the box. He’s gone but this entire thing wasn’t a bust.

  Chapter 4

  Silver Spring, Maryland

  Renegade stands at the front of a conference room located in Omega Division’s headquarters, hundreds of feet below a generic office park in suburban Maryland about forty minutes’ drive from the White House in Washington.

  He is a tall, thin bl
ack man in his mid-fifties with salt and pepper hair and a perpetually serious demeanor. He is the agent in charge of Omega Division and eternally carries the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  He heads an agency tasked with protecting millions of lives and answers only to the President of the United States.

  Sitting in front of him is the only other person in the room, Deena Marks. Marks is relaxed. She leans back in her seat with one arm draped across the chair next to her.

  She is the only person that gets away with this in front of Renegade. As his lead agent, Marks is afforded latitude others are not under Renegade’s otherwise strict regime.

  It still bothers him, though. She likes that. She likes getting under his skin while everyone else in the agency walks on eggshells around him. She respects him but can do without his consistently serious demeanor.

  To herself she thinks: If he ever smiled, it would crack his face into a million little pieces.

  He takes out the wooden box she recovered from Blanc.

  “Analysis is back. It took us forever just to open it. It looks like wood but its actually some form of metal. It had a fingerprint lock, but we were able to pull a full thumbprint from Blanc’s condo.”

  “Great. Any bling inside?”

  No reaction to the joke, and Renegade simply continues as if she hadn’t spoken up.

  “It’s a microchip. Nothing commercial. We traced it to schematics we pulled at a raid last year.”

  “What does it do?”

  “That’s the trouble. It’s designed to break encryption, specifically the encryption we use to secure our land-to-air missile systems.”

  “Can’t we just change the scheme?”

  “The chip anticipates that. We have to physically change the chipset to lock this thing out.”

  “And I’m guessing we’ve got a lot of these deployed in the field that would take forever to reconfigure?”