The Beltway Assassin

by Richard Fox

  “I’ve been in a few,” Shelton said.

  Garcia stopped talking, and Shelton saw the wheels turning in his head.

  “So you’re a soldier, right?” Garcia said. “Fuck that war, but you guys didn’t have a say in going over and getting blown up. Stop-loss and all that bullshit. So one day the Iranian says we’ve got to prove our commitment to the cause and kill a soldier.”

  Garcia lowered his chin to his chest. “I thought I could kill some guy, but I can’t. I had the guy in front of me, but…I couldn’t. Guess I’m a coward.”

  “You’re human. We aren’t meant to kill each other, that’s why soldiers go through so much training. Same thing the Iranian was doing to you.” Shelton said. “What was this cause?”

  “Jefferson was always going on about some secret group running the government, how they started the Iraq War, use fluoride in the water to make us sick, the Fed stealing our gold to send it to England. Stuff like that. I was onboard with what the fat cats were doing to destroy our country—the rest, not so much.

  “After I balked on killing some guy, Jefferson lost his goddamned mind even more than usual and kicked me out,” Garcia said. “He said if I couldn’t kill an oppressor than there was no way I’d kill myself if the cause demanded it. Went on and on about a death pact he said I was too weak to join.” His boney shoulders shrugged. “I bailed on him and the Iranian said I could come back if I found my balls. I started using again…and kind of lost interest.”

  “Tell me about Jefferson,” Shelton said. “What’s his full name?”

  “That’s the only thing I ever called him. Guy was all about living off the grid, not giving anyone the chance to track him down. He paid cash for everything. I don’t think he ever slept in the same spot more than two nights in a row. Dude’s really nuts. Anger issues. I tried to get him on some sertraline or citalopram, but he’d go on about how the drug companies just want us on their shit to bleed us dry.”

  “You know your drugs,” Shelton said.

  Garcia smiled, sharing a glimpse of blackened stumps of teeth and a whiff of halitosis.

  “They say cocaine is a hell of a drug, but meth is a motherfucker.” Garcia worked his lips over desiccated gums. “I heard about the bombing in Ashburn, figured it was him. I didn’t go to the cops because it was some one percenter getting what he deserved. Then some men in black types come looking for me, and I sort of panicked.”

  Garcia looked at Shelton’s coffee with longing. Shelton pushed it to him.

  “Who else is on Jefferson’s list?” Shelton asked.

  “I never saw it. He said the Iranian gave it to him and that we needed more revolutionaries to hit them all at once, but he said he was adding names of the guilty to it as he did more research.”

  “Did Jefferson kill a soldier like the Iranian wanted?”

  “Yeah, the day before I pussed out. Shot a guy in the back in Baltimore. No sweat, no regrets.” Garcia downed the coffee, heedless of the burns. “I think the Iranian is trying to help me. He sent a guy to that drug house right before the cops raided the place.”

  “That guy the Iranian sent—tell me more about him,” Shelton said.

  ****

  Tony took his piping-hot sandwich pockets from the microwave and blew at his fingers as scalding cheese bubbled from his lunch. Despite working for an organization with a seemingly inexhaustible budget, Tony kept the fridge stocked with such crap food that even a poor college student would think twice about eating.

  He plopped into his swivel chair and checked on his scan of the FBI’s system at TEDAC. The suite of viruses, root kits and faux administrator accounts he’d installed weren’t the best he could come up with, but it got the job done with enough plausible deniability to keep their operation clean.

  “Hello. What have we here?” Tony said. His program had moved a bevy of DNA reports to the micro USB in Irene’s computer. He couldn’t read the report, just the titles. He took a bite from his pocket sandwich, smearing cheese and processed chicken on his beard.

  The door to his office beeped, and Ritter entered, his tracksuit stained in mud. Ritter had that faraway look in his eyes he and Carlos always had after a hard mission. Tony, as a support officer, never got his hands dirty the way Ritter and Carlos did. Each had his own way to come down from a mission filled with adrenaline and death. Ritter preferred to minimize small talk and clean his gear. Carlos went to the weight pile to lift.

  As for Mike, if what he did in the field ever bothered him, he never showed any sign of it.

  Ritter rummaged through a medical locker and pulled out a bottle of pills. He popped three in his mouth and chewed, washing them down with water from some distant tropical island they kept in the fridge.

  “How’d you get back? All the transit lines are shut down,” Tony said.

  “I stole a car. It’s a block away on Bacon Street. Wipe it down and have it towed for illegal parking. Where are we on Garcia?” Ritter went to the bank of monitors showing Shelton’s interrogation of their detainee. Ritter’s brows furrowed. He turned up the volume, which had been muted, and gave Tony a sideways glance.

  “What? When you guys interrogate some guy, it isn’t a real pleasant experience for me to watch or listen to,” Tony said.

  “Shelton is FBI. He’s got his hands in kid gloves when it comes to interrogating people,” Ritter said. When the detainee had valuable information that could save lives and when less obtrusive means had yielded nothing, the Caliban Program wasn’t above using other interrogation means, enhanced or otherwise.

  “Still, if I want to listen to some tweaker ramble about—” The border around Tony’s screen flashed red, and a siren sound came from the headphones on his desk. “That’s not good.” His fingers clattered against the keyboard as the red border pulsated.

  “Not good…bad. Very bad,” Tony said.

  “What’s going on?” Ritter asked.

  “My remote-access root kit hash got sniffed—”

  “English!”

  “The FBI found my bugs. They know we were in the system but…” New program windows burst onto Tony’s screen. “Suck my logic bomb, assholes.” Tony hit enter and pushed himself away from his table.

  “We’re still clear here.” Tony’s chubby face drooped as realization came to him. “But Irene isn’t. She’s got the drive with the files we stole. When they figure out which computer the files went to…”

  “How long will that take? And I thought you said it was impossible for the FBI to detect us in their system,” Ritter said. He opened a storage cage and grabbed a suit off the rack. He started changing clothes.

  “Maybe an hour. And it would be impossible if I used one of my homebrew remote access and control kits, but I used one I cribbed from the Chinese.” Tony’s focus turned to his screen.

  “Why would you use a Chinese—Wait. Irene?” Ritter asked. Irene, American born and raised by immigrant parents from Taiwan, had little to no connection to anything on the far end of the Pacific Ocean.

  “A nice little red herring for the amateurs at the FBI—Hey, wait.” Tony went back to his workstation and looked hard at the screens. “There’s someone else in their system. Someone with a lot more skill than the amateurs working for the FBI. That’s who found my implants.”

  Ritter strapped a spare combat knife to the small of his back. He grabbed a Glock 22 from a cage and loaded it with hollow-point bullets.

  “Tell Irene to get the hell out of there,” Ritter said.

  “I can’t. All my access to her is severed, and I can’t even try to break in until my new routing protocols cycle to—”

  “English! Does she know she’s in danger?” Ritter asked.

  “Um…maybe.” Tony pointed to an alert notice on his screen. “Their network is on lockdown for a possible breach. In fact, the whole building is on lockdown. She’s a smart girl. She’ll know she’s made, right?”

  “If it was Cindy or Shannon in there, I wouldn’t be worried. But Irene has
the tactical sense of a potato. Shannon should never have sent her in.” Ritter made for the door.

  “Wait. What are you going to do?” Tony asked.

  Ritter stopped and looked at Tony over his shoulder. “We don’t leave anyone behind. I’m going to get her.”

  “You aren’t going to kill anyone, are you?” Tony asked.

  Ritter froze.

  “These are FBI agents, all Americans. I don’t think your normal stabby-stab routine is really appropriate,” Tony said. He shifted from foot to foot, waiting for Ritter’s answer. “You can’t kill Americans, Eric. We do a lot of objectively bad things, but we do it to save American lives. Right? Aren’t we the good guys?”

  “You’re right, Tony. I need something a little less lethal. Do we have a Sparky?”

  ****

  Irene’s computer screen locked up. A generic cybersecurity warning banner flashed over the top and bottom of the screen. Groans rose from the rest of the cubicles around her.

  “Who downloaded porn again?” someone asked.

  “So much for getting any work done.” The analyst in the next cubicle over stood up and stretched.

  “What’s up?” Irene said. She unplugged the micro USB from her computer and pocketed it.

  “Someone got a virus in the system,” said the man next to her. “Now we’re on lockdown until they clean it out and figure out who’s the idiot. It’s always some perv who goes to some sicko website and clicks a malicious link.”

  Fear caressed her heart and her stomach bunched up. As an analyst, she was trained never to believe in coincidence.

  “Who’s up for dinner? There someplace decent to eat nearby?” she asked. Please, please, please let me out, she thought.

  The skinny analyst with the checkered pants scoffed. “We’re on lockdown. No one gets out. No one but the investigators gets in. Let’s just hope they don’t try to bring those nerds from Fort Meade in again. It’ll take two days just for them to get down here.”

  “Oh, wow. We got the SWAT team here,” someone said from the window. Red-and-blue emergency lights whirled in the darkening sky beyond the windows.

  Irene opened her purse and found her key ring. A plastic LED flashlight on the ring disguised an emergency beacon. She squeezed the flashlight button three times, holding the last press for three seconds. The tiny bulb blinked red. Her distress call went out over the cell phone networks, and she prayed that Tony and Ritter would get it before it was too late. Irene bit her bottom lip hard enough to taste blood. She felt like a bleeding seal, and the sharks were circling.

  ****

  Garcia wolfed down a cup of instant noodles, his third in the last twenty minutes.

  “So what happens to me now?” he asked Shelton, who sat across from him, arms over his chest. He looked at Garcia as if Garcia was the dog that had just pissed on the carpet.

  “I’m taking you to county. You’ll be processed and arraigned there.” He tossed Garcia’s coat and shoes onto the table. “Get dressed.”

  Garcia, a strand of noodle dangling from his lips, went pale. “You’re kidding, right? I go to jail, and the men in black get me,” Garcia said, his voice rattling.

  “Maybe they’ll give you an anal probe when they take you to the mother ship. Let’s go,” Shelton said.

  “I-I-I’m a witness! Right? Can’t you put me in protective custody?”

  Shelton slammed a fist onto the table, sending empty noodle cups to the floor. Garcia put on his coat and mumbled as he tied his shoes.

  Shelton grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and led him out of the interrogation room. They were halfway to the exit when Tony ran out of his office.

  “Wait. Where are you taking him?” Tony asked. He ran around the pair and blocked the only exit with his considerable bulk, already heaving from the little exercise.

  “Move it. He’s going in the system,” Shelton said.

  Tony held his arms out and shook his head, jowls flapping. “No way. We’re not done with him yet. You heard what—”

  Shelton slapped Tony’s hands aside and poked a finger in his chest.

  “Last time I checked, you were in charge of precisely jack and shit around here,” Shelton said.

  “The only shit around here is in your head!” Tony leaned forward and shoved Shelton with all the might he could muster.

  Shelton took two steps back, then charged Tony. He slammed a fist into Tony’s gut. The big man went down with a high-pitched yelp.

  The exit banged open. Garcia ran off into the night.

  Tony wheezed. “Why…so hard?”

  “You felt that?” Shelton asked.

  Tony answered with his middle finger.

  “With a line like ‘the only shit around here is in your head,’ I didn’t think you could sell a love tap.”

  “Oh, God. I think you broke my liver.” Tony rolled onto his back, a ring of fish-belly-pale fat poking from beneath his shirt.

  “Get on the trackers. I have to run around outside to make him think I’m really looking for him,” Shelton said. During the interrogation, Tony had put GPS trackers in both of Garcia’s shoes and his jacket. The jacket also had a microphone that would let Tony and Shelton hear every word the junkie said. The little show they’d put on for Garcia had given him the chance to escape and lead them right to whoever he’d turn to for help. The plan was for Shelton to follow Garcia straight to the Iranian or Jefferson, and so far the plan was coming together.

  Shelton pulled Tony to his feet. “Sorry if I hit you a little too hard.”

  “Bring back a pizza.” Tony straightened his T-shirt and lumbered off with as much pride as he could manage.

  ****

  Garcia didn’t disappoint. In Shelton’s brief career in law enforcement, he’d learned that junkies, when motivated by the need for their next fix or when in danger of losing their freedom (and access to their fix), were remarkably clever.

  Garcia made his way to the Reston Town Center, an upscale shopping and dining area that catered to the wealthiest families in northern Virginia. There he lifted a purse from an inattentive trophy wife as she ogled the display at a boutique cupcake store.

  Shelton watched Garcia from the parking lot outside a package store. The junkie extracted the cell phone and cash before dumping the purse in a garbage can. Garcia ran over to a bus stop and made a call.

  Tony, monitoring everything from his desk, patched half of the call through to the earpiece in Shelton’s ear.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Garcia said. “No! No, I’d never. But they’re after me. Can you…? Yeah, I can meet you there. Blue line to the steak place, then underground. Got it…No, I haven’t heard from Jefferson. Haven’t seen him either…Okay, my bus is here.” Shelton heard the squeal of hydraulic breaks, and the call ended.

  “Tony, where’s he going?” Shelton asked.

  “Blue line is the subway…steak place…underground,” Tony said, his words muffled by whatever he was eating. “Probably Crystal City, just south of the Pentagon. There’s a Morton’s Steakhouse and an underground mall. You think you can beat him there?”

  “Driving east during rush hour is a lot better than driving west. Have Ritter link up with me there,” Shelton said. He pulled out of the parking lot and got onto the toll way.

  ****

  The web boiled over with theories and misinformation about his bombings. Visiting a public library to jump on an Internet terminal was a risk but worth it to see the fruits of his labor ripen. Thousands of sub-forums on Reddit discussed everything from the identity of the bomber(s) to calls for more attacks on the fat cats in cities like San Francisco and Boston.

  Jefferson had a good chuckle at the wild theory that the Tea Party had paid al-Qaeda to carry out the attack. Another thread pinned the blame on Mossad and the Illuminati. The temptation to jump in and drop just the right hints that he was the one responsible was strong…but he had to resist. Nothing so obvious for the fascists at the NSA to find.

  Logging onto Red
dit with his usual account to check on an upcoming Occupy march on the Mall was risky enough.

  He pulled his list of targets from a coat pocket and started entering the names into a search engine. Most were public figures, well known to the DC social circuit, but they’d gone dark in the wake of his attacks.

  “Backed up for miles! You won’t believe the traffic in Lincoln Heights!” said the woman’s voice behind Jefferson. Rage coursed through his arms, his fists clenched like white-knuckled clubs. They were in a library, where silence was sacrosanct.

  Jefferson, his core muscles tightening into a tree trunk, spun his chair around. The speaker, an overweight woman in leopard-print spandex pants, so tight they looked like they would burst, her dyed blonde hair in cornrows, was on her cell phone while she surfed the net. Her screen was open to a Craigslist ad featuring a twenty-pound-lighter picture of herself and a list of prices. Just another prostitute using the tax payers’ dime to spread sin and disease.

  “I got daddies calling me all over. They stuck at home and want some company,” the prostitute said, heedless of her volume.

  “Shh!” Jefferson hissed, his hands shaking. Knees quivered in anticipation of launching himself at her.

  Her conversation continued without pause.

  Jefferson forced himself back to his search. He murmured Occupy slogans to calm down. Washington, DC had the highest rate of AIDS in the country; the neighborhoods she worked had rates as high as South Africa and Zimbabwe. He didn’t regret wishing her a slow and agonizing death.

  There. A name on his list was still in DC…and he was speaking at the Marriott Hotel just off the Mall later tonight. He had only one bomb ready to go…and there wasn’t time to rig up a car bomb to hit his target on his way in or out of the hotel. Jefferson’s mind raced as he planned his next murder.