Bad Intent

by Jordan Cole

  “You were just trying to make some extra scratch, right?” Riley spoke softly. “Hell, I don’t blame you. Look at me. I was a merc, for God’s sake.”

  “I lost all my money. Everything I had. You don’t understand anything.”

  “Sure I do, Frazier.”

  “No you don’t. You killed your CO. If there was any justice, you’d be rotting in prison right now.”

  “I know you’re inclined to take the officer’s side, but believe me, he had it coming.”

  “It’s not over,” Frazier said. His eyes wide and bloodshot, sweat on his forehead. “Whitehall is still out there. You don’t stand a chance against him.”

  “He’s out there. For now. But who’s to say he’s coming back?”

  “He’s loyal. He’s not a fragging piece of garbage like you.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he knows which way the wind is blowing. Packs up, gets out of town. It’s all the same to me. I’d be happy to let him go.”

  The pistol still inches from Agatha’s side. Frazier’s jerking motions growing more and more frantic.

  “Don’t make me do it, Riley.”

  “An hour from now we’ll have a hundred federal agents swarming this compound. Even if you got the password, it doesn’t matter. You can’t erase everything. It’s out there.”

  Frazier shook his head.

  “I’m not going to jail.”

  “So do the honorable thing. Let the girl go. Put one in your head, instead.”

  Frazier stood up straight. Still aiming his gun down at Agatha. His face like something from a nightmare. He ran his free hand down his slacks, creasing them. Then his mouth straightened. More of a grimace than a smile.

  “You think I should?”

  “I would,” Riley said. “Beats spending the rest of your life in a cell in Leavenworth. Over in an instant, no pain, you sleep forever.”

  “Tempting.”

  “She doesn’t need to die, Frazier.”

  Frazier was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded. Pulled the gun away from Agatha and raised it to his right temple, very slowly.

  “If Whitehall doesn’t kill you,” he said, “Will you give a message to my wife?”

  “Yes,” said Riley.

  “Tell her I love her. Tell her, I’m sorry that it came to this. And finally, tell her FUCK YOU.”

  Frazier jerked the pistol toward Riley. Incredibly fast. But not fast enough. Because Frazier was drunk, and Riley was sober, and twenty-five years younger, and pissed off, and saw it coming a mile away. A last-ditch attempt from an old, arrogant man who couldn’t admit when he was beat. Riley had the MP5 leveled before Frazier’s gun even left his temple. Pulled the trigger while the pistol was still swinging in his direction. Frazier’s last sounds a guttural scream before his head split apart from the pressure wave of three 9mm bullets, tearing through his skull like it was made of taffy. He had barely hit the ground before Riley was at Agatha’s side, pulling the bag from her head, grabbing her hand, seeing her terrified face.

  “Agatha,” Riley said. Her eyes were wide and transfixed, her hair waterlogged. She sputtered and gasped, liquid pooling out of her mouth. But she was alive. Throop hustled over and knelt beside the two of them.

  “Grab a knife,” Riley said, holding Agatha’s head forward as she continued to cough up water. “Cut her loose.”

  Throop dug around in her pockets and came out with one of the K-bars. Sawed through Agatha’s restraints. She sat up, looking around like she didn’t know where she was, but held up her arms in protest at Riley and Throop’s gestures of concern.

  “I’m all right, I’m all right,” said Agatha. The words breathless and throaty. Staring at Riley as if he was a ghost. “How did you get out? Who’s she?”

  “Renee Throop. She’s with the MPD,” Riley said. “She and the Charlemagne County Sheriff saved my bacon.”

  “Scott is still out there,” Agatha said. Some calm returned to her now. “Or Whitehall. Or whatever the hell his name really is. He was waterboarding me. Trying to get my passwords to my blog. Pouring it down my throat.”

  Riley said nothing. The air was still heavy with the smell of gun smoke. Lividity and exhaustion on Agatha’s face.

  “We know,” Throop said. “He’s probably the last one. Took a couple of shots at us while we were racing over here. We’ll get him.”

  “No,” Riley said. “I’ll go alone.”

  “Don’t you think--”

  “He’s holed up somewhere with his rifle. More people just means more targets. You two stay here. Find a tarp or something to cover the bodies. Guard the doors and wait until I get back. If I don’t, Whitehall won’t either. He’ll be in the wind.”

  “How do you know he’s still out there?” Agatha asked.

  “Because there’s still an hour until daylight. And he doesn’t know Frazier’s dead. He still has some loyalty to the command structure. He’ll be trying to take down Hennessey. Guy like that doesn’t care for being shot at.”

  “He’s bad, Riley,” Agatha said. Still clutching his hand. “He’s as bad as they come.”

  “We’ll see who’s worse.”

  He shouldered the MP5. Still 24 rounds left. The pain in his mouth and his side was starting to creep back. Riley tried to visualize the compound. Tried to pinpoint where Whitehall might be shooting from. But maybe ten minutes had passed. Whitehall could be moving around, changing his position. No telling if he was focused on the interrogation hut or the armory where Hennessey was holed up. The only way of knowing for sure would be to draw Whitehall’s fire.

  Riley turned back around and went to the door where he’d come in. Crouched down and breathed hard and slammed it open, running out in a frenzy. Bracing for a rifle shot which he might not even hear. But nothing happened. Either Whitehall was focused on Hennessey, or he was flanking around, or he was somewhere else entirely. An expert sharpshooter who could be anywhere in a five-hundred-yard range. Not a great place to be exposed.

  The night air was cooling, moisture beginning to collect on the grass. Riley could see his breath in the air. He swiveled to his left and ran east, toward the shooting range. Would be a logical place to go. If Whitehall had practiced there, it was a place he’d be comfortable with. Someone who turned around so that they weren’t facing the forest would have a straight on view of the middle of the compound. And maybe Whitehall wasn’t used to working without a spotter. If he was alone out there, he could be out of his element.

  A muffled gunshot sounded, and Riley went flat. He recognized the report. Hennessey, shooting at something. Still alive. Riley prayed he was just blind firing, not exposing himself in the window. Would Whitehall take the bait? Maybe, if he hadn’t turned tail, or doubled back to the huts trying to link up with Frazier. Riley gathered himself and sprinted toward the shooting range. Found a long wooden platform with sandbags and mats spread out over it. Farther east, a thousand yard stretch of grass, targets erected every hundred yards or so, growing fainter and fainter in the distance.

  Whitehall hadn’t fired back. Riley scanned southeast, wishing the night vision goggles hadn’t been destroyed in the hail of bullets. Then he saw a building. Faintly, from the corner of his eye. Almost parallel with the interrogation huts, but a few hundred yards in the opposite direction. A small structure, like a guest house or a servant’s quarters. Two tiny windows on the ground floor, far apart from each other. But there was a little alcove in the roof, where the beams came together. Tall enough for a wide angle of movement, but enclosed enough to conceal a muzzle blast. A sniper nestled in that perch could shake some shingles aside and have a perfect view of nearly the entire compound. And it was close enough to the interrogation huts that Whitehall could have hightailed it there when the shooting started. As anonymous a structure as you could conceive. Had Riley been looking at it dead on, he probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But the sideways glance sparked something in his brain.

  All well and good. But was Whitehall still inside?


  Riley worked his way to the rear of the building, a long flanking maneuver. He had to imagine that Whitehall wasn’t just lying up there, totally exposed. That he had some sort of rear guard protection. But he had to have set up in a hurry. Maybe without enough time to run through his usual checklist of precautions.

  Riley moved through the grassy expanse in a low, fast trot. If he was wrong, and Whitehall had set up somewhere else, he was making himself a juicy target. But he didn’t think so. As he neared the building, it felt more and more like a logical choice. Some sort of residence, like an officer’s housing. Maybe it was even Whitehall’s own personal quarters, when he was training the recruits. In that case, he’d feel comfortable there. His home turf.

  The back of the building was actually the front. Riley found the same kind of flimsy door he had at the interrogation hut.

  Except this time, it was open.

  A sliver of light shining through from the gap. Riley thought of IEDs, trip wires strung across doorways. Unlikely. Whitehall may have been crazy, but he wasn’t suicidal. That didn’t, however, preclude a shotgun aimed at the door rigged to fire. Riley eased the door open with his boot, and heard a dim crunching noise. Looked inside, and suddenly it made sense.

  The space was small. A cot on the far wall, a counter with a sink, two small stove burners. A rigid wooden ladder bolted to the far wall, leading to a loft above. And the floor covered with dishes and silverware. Every inch of it strewn with porcelain and glass, some of it cracked, some of it not. Scattered by Whitehall in a hurry. It made sense. A skilled lockpick could get through the flimsy door in about thirty seconds, with a minimum of noise. But nobody could walk over the broken plates without making a sound. It was impossible.

  Whitehall knew Riley was here.

  Riley stood just outside the doorway, frozen for a moment, considering his options. The lofted space above the tiny quarters wasn’t large, but it was wide enough that Whitehall had some room to maneuver. No way Riley could climb up without exposing himself. And the space was set far back enough that he was at a bad angle to simply spray it with bullets. Maybe a grenade would have done it. But Riley didn’t have any of those. As he was considering, a voice called out.

  “I can hear you down there, Riley.”

  Riley didn’t respond. Waited in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the dark space of the loft, unable to see Whitehall.

  “Guess you took care of Frazier and the others, huh? Decent work. Caught us scrambling.”

  Whitehall was speaking loudly, to be heard and, Riley assumed, to conceal any kind of furtive movements he might be making.

  “Don’t think your buddy with the rifle will be much help,” Whitehall continued. “He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from that distance.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Riley said.

  “Would I? That’s a kick. Listen, don’t be mad about the girl. Just business. You guys get into it, on the road together? Get intimate? I could see why you’d be upset, in that case. She’s a good lookin’ gal, Riley. Uptight, though. Kind of frigid, right?”

  “It’s over, Whitehall.” Riley took a few steps forward, his boots crunching over the plates. Listening for Whitehall’s movement above, but hearing nothing.

  “Of course it’s over. Everyone’s dead, aside from me. That’s what I’m saying. You think I have some vendetta against you? I could care less. I was only in it for the money. Frazier was a fool. You turn around and walk out of here, and I’ll do the same. God willing, we’ll never see each other again.”

  “Tempting,” Riley said.

  “But?” One barked syllable, almost mocking.

  “But you killed Ramirez. And Pete Saccarelli. And Liz Farber. And my buddy Dallas. And probably a bunch of others. So, no. You’re not walking out of here.”

  No response. Riley’s finger tensed on the trigger. Then, something small and dark came clattering down from the top of the loft. His vision erupted into a blinding white flash. Like a supernova had just exploded next to him. No sound except for a loud keening, a ringing through his consciousness. He stumbled. Tried to raise his gun, but couldn’t get his bearings.

  Then, before he even knew what was happening, Whitehall was upon him.

  Riley’s vision cleared in time to see a blurry shape, leaping down from the loft above. Felt a heavy form drop on him, and they scrabbled together, the momentum causing them to tumble over the plates, crashing and thumping. Riley felt the MP5 go flying off his shoulder and clatter across the room. His eyes full of throbbing circles, blurred images. But he saw enough to make out Whitehall’s right arm, coming toward him with something large and glinting. Whitehall wasn’t making the same mistake his subordinates had, back in the Berkshires apartments. Close quarters combat, and he was coming at Riley with a knife.

  This time, it was Riley who went for the gun. He was stunned and disoriented, Whitehall on top of him with a large, angry hunting knife in his hand. Riley reached desperately for his waistband, and the Smith & Wesson that some subterranean part of his brain told him was still waiting there. It was a useless effort. Whitehall closed on him, much too quickly. Guns, in a tight space. Couldn’t be relied on.

  Riley abandoned his grab for the gun and tried to knock Whitehall’s hand away. It slashed toward him, the knife blade slicing across Riley’s forearm. He cried out and darted away. But there was no place to go. His back was against the counter of the tiny space. Whitehall moved like a dervish, small and quick. His hands like blurs. No chance Riley would be able to pin his arms. Riley grabbed a stray glass on the countertop and tried to bring it down on Whitehall’s head, but Whitehall dodged aside effortlessly. Like a welterweight boxer, countering a blow. Danced back then forward, coming at Riley head on.

  Riley knew he wasn’t going to be able to defend himself. Couldn’t try to block the knife and squirm away. He was pinned against the counter. Whitehall advancing with the knife raised, fractions of a second seeming like eternities. After all this, he was going to be stabbed to death, and there was nothing he could do about it. No rifle shots incoming to scare Whitehall away this time. If Riley went for the revolver again, Whitehall would step in easily and have the knife in his jugular before he even got it out of his pants.

  Whitehall came forward. His face calm, eyes narrowed in concentration, dark hair slicked back on his head. Stepping in close, his hands clenched into fists, the knife moving in an arc toward Riley’s midsection. A smile on his face.

  Seeing the smile, Riley lost all semblance of control. Any kind of measured reaction went out the window. Riley’s reached out and wrapped his hands around Whitehall’s neck. Like he was possessed by some force outside himself.

  The decision had positive effects. Whitehall seemed surprised. Probably expected Riley to twist away, afraid of the knife, not move toward him. And Riley’s outstretched arms shielded his neck and torso from the blade. His blind rage had yielded benefits.

  Whitehall’s neck with thin and wiry, like the rest of him. Riley’s hands fit easily around it. And he was squeezing as hard as he could. Like Whitehall’s head was a balloon he was trying to pop. Whitehall tried instinctively to pry Riley’s hands away. Wasn’t going to happen. Those hands were locked in a vice grip, and nothing short of a blowtorch could remove them. Then Whitehall kicked Riley in the balls. Dead on. Riley gasped and nausea crashed over him and pain flooded his gut that made everything that came before it seem tame in comparison. Whitehall kicked again, and the pain doubled. Riley twisted his body to shield from another blow. But he didn’t let go.

  Finally, Whitehall seemed to remember the knife. He sliced it across Riley’s left forearm. Riley didn’t budge. Whitehall then plunged it into Riley’s stomach. Like a hard punch. He barely felt it. Riley squeezed harder. Whitehall brought the knife down, again and again, quick stabbing motions. Riley felt something warm trickling beneath his shirt. But the pain had lessened. Adrenaline masking everything. Riley squeezed harder.

  Whitehall’s eyes filled wit
h blood. Riley urged his hands to keep squeezing, crushing vital pipes and pathways in Whitehall’s neck. The knife came down into Riley’s side once again, much slower this time. Whitehall stared at Riley through hemorrhaged pupils. His smile was gone. The arm with the knife raised one final time. Riley squeezed harder than he’d ever squeezed anything in his life. The knife fell to the ground. Whitehall’s hands went to his throat. He was making small gasps and wheezes. His face completely blue now. Riley was almost finished. His energy gone. He had another few seconds on his feet, and that was all. He put everything he had into one final throttle. Whitehall’s eyes rolled back, and he went limp. Riley released his grip, and Whitehall collapsed to the floor.

  Riley followed him down.

  He had enough wherewithal to find the knife among the cracked plates and glasses. A dismaying amount of blood pooling around him. Riley took the knife, and using his last reserve of strength, buried it to the hilt in Whitehall’s chest. Then he lied down on his back. Saw for the first time the many holes in his shirt, the rivers of blood welling out of them. Heard footsteps crunching outside. But it was all happening outside of him. Above him. From somewhere very far away, he saw the cabin door open. Throop’s head, peering in, at the end of a very long tunnel, very bright, everything rushing past him into a glowing singularity.

  “Thought I told you,” he started. “To stay inside.”

  Then the world collapsed to the size of a pinhead, and it was gone.

  30.

  Faces.

  They appeared occasionally amid nothingness, almost like the dark itself had conjured them up.

  Some of them he recognized. There was his ex-wife, staring away from him, like a page burned from his memory, her eyes locked on something far off in the distant blackness. He saw Agatha’s face, from before, when she still had her red hair. Agatha turned to him, smiling, her mouth opening as if to say something, but clamping shut again before she could.