The Harbinger of Change

by Timothy Jon Reynolds

  No, he thought. I am an agent of my country now, whether they can figure it out or not. He was going to see this through, even if it meant getting scraped trying to make it happen. His wife’s existence on this planet depended on it! He was at the ten-minute mark now, and it was time to move. He hoped she knew what she was doing. It all was on her now.

  * * *

  Ken was still seething. He couldn’t believe that after everything he’d done for that bitch, Sarah had the nerve to call him and tell him to pick up Crawford in Sacramento. He hated the fact that they were so intertwined now that he couldn’t afford to lose her anymore. So when she called and said she’d have to tell Rogers if he didn’t pick up Crawford, Ken had to stow the level of anger that was mounting, anger that he had almost focused on her.

  Her words echoed: “It is just too risky, Ken.” Damn her, it was no time to lose her nerve now. But she had, and had chosen this “Field Reserve” as his companion. According to Sarah, “It covers our asses with a grape skin’s worth of protection. By yourself, Ken, I think you’ll lose. Either way, there’s no story that will work. At least this way, it was you and your partner on a hunch.”

  Damn her for being right. This Crawford kid actually tried to small talk me. That won’t happen twice. I guess he didn’t know that I don’t like people. Poor kid didn’t make a sound the whole hour. Now we’re here and it’s time for him to listen.

  * * *

  Matt checked his watch. Twelve minutes left. It was almost time to make his move over to the hangers. He was reaching for the door handle, when he saw some headlights and sank back. The car slowed at the front of the terminal and made the first left into the parking lot. A few seconds later, Matt saw a small-framed man heading for the front door, looking furtively. In Matt’s world, never a good sign.

  The man stopped short of pulling at the doors, though. After listening and looking in, he left without attempting to enter, and instead headed off toward the hangers. Damn it, who was this guy? He slid out of the car carrying their backpack, but before he got out he switched the dome light off, trying not to become a lighthouse.

  Matt went around the back of the BMW and was heading for the hangers, too. But then he saw the phone-lit silhouette of a passenger in the stranger’s black Ford Expedition, which he now realized was goverment-issued.

  This was a real problem. Matt needed to neutralize this person, but couldn’t use his gun, or it would expose them before they could get away, not to mention notifying his partner. This was a real dilemma because the individual in the Expedition was obviously a good guy—otherwise, he wouldn’t be here hunting them. Matt kept reminding himself that over the course of the past hours, he had become a bad guy now.

  He looked at his watch. Nine minutes to go. He made his move to the corner of the car and realized that in ten odd minutes, they would meet regardless, so he steeled himself for that reality. This guy was going to try to kill him before he could get out any type of explanation, especially if confronted alone with the man he believed just killed two other Federal Agents.

  The news had said they were Homeland Security, but how could he have known? Matt’s problem, and he knew it, was that this situation had now become him acting against his country. But what they didn’t understand was the threat to his family. If he didn’t play this just right, these guys would kill Jan, unless he chose to believe his kidnapper was lying. No, she wasn’t lying about the threat, she was conveying.

  He adjusted himself so the driver’s mirror wouldn’t reveal him, when suddenly the passenger door opened and a six-foot-plus guy with striking blonde hair got out and stood looking at the hangers, like a dog looking after its Master that has gone into the bank. Then the man’s phone came out again, and he went into conversation.

  “Yeah, it’s Crawford,” he said into the phone. His voice was way deeper than Matt would have expected. “No, he’s on foot, heading for one of the hangers. I’m in the parking lot waiting, where he told me to be. No, Sarah, that’s not what we talked about, but he was very specific in his instruction that I am to stay here. Now, are you telling me that I’m to tell him that I need to go with him, like some kind of chaperone? The man wouldn’t let me speak on the way here Sarah; he’s a major reprobate. There was no way I am telling him anything. Now he said he would be back in twenty minutes, so I at least have a reason to go looking for him if it’s much longer than that. Okay then, I’ll get back to you when we know more, but I think it’s a dead lead here. This place is deserted.”

  Agent Crawford hung up on his heated exchange. As he was placing his phone back into his pocket, Matt slammed the back of his skull with the butt of his Beretta. Matt had taken advantage of the phone argument to creep up on the agent. He surely should have been trained better than that, he thought.

  Matt considered putting a sleeper hold on the man, but it was just too risky. No, this was for keeps, and if the guy lives, then that was great, but my main concern is a dispatched enemy. The blow was a skull-cracker. Even if he woke up, the agent was not going to be any good for fighting.

  Matt forced himself to use lethal force—anything less could lead to his death. It was the reason cops didn’t shoot to wound. He’d made it that far in the Academy.

  A quick search of the man revealed no weapon, and no cuffs. What kind of cop has no cuffs? He quickly opened the vehicle’s door, and the interior light revealed a Heckler and Kotch 9mm, with a silencer attached laying on the seat! Heckler and Kotch silenced? Really?! Now he was certain that the guy going after Vera was in the CIA. No government agency carries silenced weapons, other than the very group he had just joined as a patriot.

  Suddenly he was on that fence again. This could be a good time to flip, he began to think; but then he looked down at the crumpled agent. Matt knew that by nabbing her, they would get nothing. She was just a puppet, but she was one of them, that much he knew. He was the only one that might have a chance to see who’s running this operation. Right before they kill me, he mused. He looked at his watch. Six minutes to go, damn.

  He grabbed the fallen agent’s gun off the seat and headed for the hangers, holstering his own non-silenced weapon. Matt checked the chamber, verified that it was loaded, and removed the safety. Someone was planning on killing us, it seems. Matt always yelled at the characters in movies he would watch, about things like checking the chamber and safety. Now, he was in the movie. He needed to keep that in mind, because this was not the movies and he wasn’t going to live if he made a single mistake tonight. He stopped short and went back to the SUV. He wrote a quick note from the notebook on the dash and left it on the seat.

  * * *

  They walked and laughed. Vera had him so in love with her within the space of an hour that this man would marry her tonight, and would spend the rest of his life worshiping her. God, men are so weak. He was prattling on about something or other, but she couldn’t focus. Apparently he liked Japan, but somewhere like Singapore would be more affordable. She couldn’t believe how boring he was, but his life was just about to get a whole lot more exciting. If he lived, he’d probably have more pussy than he’d know what to do with. A good story like this could get a guy laid for years—Vera was quite sure of that.

  They got to the hanger. There, she punched in the seven-digit key code. The door popped open, and they were inside. Doug didn’t notice that the hanger door didn’t shut right, and was left slightly ajar.

  The plane was as promised, a brand spanking new Cessna 310. She hadn’t gotten ripped off. Well, actually, Doug wouldn’t really know. He had just been bullshitting her earlier. When she had asked Doug to see the plane, all he could think about was extending time with her in any way he could. He had opened the passenger doors, looked into the spacious aircraft and said, “She still has that new car smell.”

  When he had turned around, she had closed the gap and was right on top of him.

  Doug had started for a second at the overture, and then he had her in his embrace. This can’t be happening
. I never get this lucky. Oh my God, she’s such a good kisser!

  After five minutes of heavy petting, she broke off and asked about the plane again. So he tried to amaze her with what he knew about flying in general. She told him that she wanted to take guests to Ensenada, and asked if he would fly them.

  Doug was giving the answer, when out of nowhere a smaller man in dress pants and a t-shirt appeared and said, “She’s not going to Mexico.

  Doug immediately snapped, “Who the fuck are you?” and took a fighting stance. The answer was the delivery of several, well-timed, lethal moves. The little man moved quickly, and every move he did made an impact noise. After what must have been seven unanswered blows, the last move probably ending their chances with this pilot, bouncing his head off the concrete floor of the hanger with a sickening sound. The final blow had struck the back of the pilot’s neck in a chopping rabbit-punch type of move, and he had been seemingly unconscious as he hit the ground, doing nothing to protect his face from the impending impact with the hanger floor.

  It was over before it started. Vera tried to run. He grabbed her hair, only ending up with her wig in his hand. She then made a shimmy move to get by him, but he was able to shove her off balance as she tried. Her body slammed into the doorframe, and she fell straight to the ground. He was then on her like a wrestler.

  Although Vera was a deadly fighting machine, she was no match for Ken Beck. She quickly found out what every other person who ever tangled with him discovered. Ken Beck possessed incredible strength for a man of his stature. She fought with all her might, but the more she fought, the more he seemed to like it. As a matter of fact, she could now feel exactly how much he was “liking it.”

  He used his chin to wedge in her collarbone, and then he whispered, “You’re going to tell me everything, Bitch.” Then he smelled her hair, and his eyes went wild. He said to her, “What’s that smell?” She tried with all her might to get out of that hold, but he restrained her and smelled her again. Every time he did, he grew more and more sexually charged. He finally whispered in her ear, “You’re going to talk AND MORE.”

  She replied through gritted teeth, as he was pressing her jaw with his forearm, “No, I’m not!” That’s when he pinned her arm under her back, and she felt his hand unzip her pants suit. She had chosen the kind with the zipper that goes through the crotch and she thought, NO WAY! Vera started to fight in a way that even surprised her. First she bit the forearm pressed against her face, and when Beck recoiled from that, she was able to free her right hand. She scratched his face with the desperation of survival, going for the eyes.

  The savagery of the next two blows immediately incapacitated her. The first blow surely broke her nose. The second struck her temple with a purpose.

  When she came to, he was in her! She fought pointlessly, with very little strength, well beyond stunned. She was definitely being raped! Who was this guy? What kind of Law Enforcement Officer would do this?

  He kept on smelling her hair during the assault, and she realized that Pablo’s pheromones were having an adverse effect on this man. Somehow her essence had sent him over the edge.

  Then something really bad happened inside her head. All her past experiences came rushing back, thoughts that were supposed to have been erased. All the rapes, all the customers who paid to “get it rough,” all the times she was passed around like less than human.

  Pablo had enabled her to forget her past, and had helped her to realize that she had purpose. He had programmed her to forget about the horrors, and to look toward the future. He had even hypnotized her, making the past disappear. But now it all came flooding back, and she didn’t want to live any more with these thoughts!

  The whole time this savage man was engrossed in this act, he continued to interrogate her. He kept slapping her, and telling her it would stop if she told him whom she was working for. She couldn’t even look at him, let alone listen, even though he was demanding it. Finally she looked at him as he threatened to punch her in the face again if she didn’t look at him.

  She could tell he was going to climax, and she couldn’t bear to look into his smug, psychotic face, with those lifeless, fucking blue eyes. She closed her eyes again, waiting for the punch, or for him to finish a rape that was just another of the long swath of insults cast on her since she was a child. She felt his body stiffen in that familiar way that initiates climax, and then his full weight was on her. Gross!

  But something else was wrong, and she realized her face was wet and warm. She opened her eyes and a corpse was on top of her. Part of his head was gone. She screamed insanely, throwing him off and kicking him away in an adrenaline-fueled move that actually sent the man’s body skidding a little before it hit the wheel of the plane. Vera looked across the room and couldn’t believe what she saw before blackness overcame her.

  7—Blindside

  His hands were doing it again, and Matt hated it. Every time he arrested someone, his adrenaline shot up, and his hands would shake. Once he had busted a seventy-year old woman stealing a scarf, and his hands were shaking during the arrest, most notably during the writing of the incident report. Funny as it was, he knew that if he was going to really be a cop one day, then he might have to take a hard shot. If his hands were shaking, then he wasn’t going to be able to hit the target—or worse, he’d hit something else.

  It was right about that time that he had met Russell Peltz. Peltz was a hard-looking man, a man who had written the book on old school. Russell had taught firearms at the local Community College, but he was no college teacher. He was a Sergeant for the Sunnyvale Police Department. He was also the SWAT team leader, and he just flat-out loved guns. So much, in fact, that he had sacrificed most of his hearing with bad decisions he had made in his youth. Peltz was pepper-haired and sixtyish, and kept his hair cut tight at all times. Matt believed Peltz could have taken anyone in the room out to the woodshed for a good beating and never broken a sweat.

  The fact that Peltz had been sixty and still a Sergeant was all one had to know about his people skills. But if one loved and respected firearms, and wasn’t annoying or a criminal, then Russell Peltz could be one’s best friend. Matt remembered looking through the class schedule, and when he saw firearms listed he had thought, Wow, that’s a funny class for school.

  Then he had noticed the prerequisite of an active twelve units of Administration of Justice to take the class. Matt had met the requirement, so he had taken the course.

  The first day, Peltz had started by saying, “You’ve all had your backgrounds thoroughly checked to be in this class. Now I’m hoping a lot of you are fairly inexperienced, so everything you know or thought you knew about guns, is going right out the window with little resistance. I will reshape you. If you happen to be an expert already, and you came here to show off, then leave now. I have no time for novelty acts, and this class is for people who want to learn.

  “If you came here to safely learn everything that I know about firearms, and you promise to listen to instructions at all times, then I’m your man. Consequently, I have no leniency toward mistakes on the firing line, as there is no margin for error. I have one main rule: never bring ammo into or load a weapon in this class or outside of the firing range. Does everyone understand this?”

  Everyone responded, “Yes.” The class had been a mixture of all races and sexes, including the obligatory fat, lonely, talkative guy, who had ended up working for the ATF of all things.

  Peltz had continued, “The weapon in front of you is a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight caliber revolver, and I have placed it there after confirming that it is unloaded. The first rule you’ve probably learned that we will break is, you will pick up those guns, check them to ensure they are unloaded”—he had taken a sidebar to show how to do that properly—“and aim them at me.”

  “You will then practice dry firing at me. In this room, there are no bullets allowed—ever. If you’re caught with even a single bullet, you will be expelled! Am I understood?” />
  The class had responded in unison, “Yes.”

  Peltz had then instructed them, “Okay, so let’s pick them up and work on breathing.”

  That had immediately perked Matt up, and he had become a Peltz sponge for the next six months. By the time he had finished that class, he had not only known how to control his breathing, but what part of the breath to take the shot in (which was actually between breaths). He had also known how fast the bullet was going to go, what its impact would be, and what he should expect the follow through to be. Russell Peltz had been his inspiration for mastering weapons, and Matt had become the best shot he knew as a result.

  He had also learned that there was nothing he could do about the shakes. They were going to happen as soon as the adrenaline flowed high. There was a lot one could do to minimize the effects on one’s shooting, though, and Matt had learned all the known techniques.

  He approached the hanger with two minutes left, and he was breathing heavily. It took twenty seconds to get his breathing under control before he could stealthily enter the door.

  Matt immediately heard a mixture of sounds that were very confusing. Once he focused, he realized it was an interrogation. Entering the hanger, there was a small partition wall that prevented him from observing the entire hangar bay.

  Rounding the entry wall, he saw the very disturbing sight: their pilot lay unconscious and the squirrel man from the front of the airport on top of Vera, horrifically raping her as he interrogated her!

  So much for being on the fence, this piece of shit thinks he’s in Vietnam fifty years ago! The world doesn’t operate like this anymore. The CIA doesn’t have the impunity to operate like this on American soil, Patriot Act or not. No, this was a rogue agent acting on his own accord, and this was not, and could not be sanctioned.