Stealth Retribution

by Vikki Kestell

  No, the mere mention of Harmon’s name would engender a flurry of additional questions, questions that would, inexorably, lead to more serious charges—charges such as sedition, treason, and murder. On the other hand, those in power who wished to avoid besmirching the former VP’s reputation (and likely tarring the current administration with the same brush) might choose a different path toward resolving a ticklish and embarrassing problem.

  Cushing swallowed. She knew how she would handle—had handled—an inconvenient truth such as herself.

  I need to escape while I can.

  She had money—not as much as she’d wanted before she retired—but enough. She had a sizable amount of emergency cash on hand and had stashed her nest egg in a secure Cayman Islands account. All she had to do was make her way to a country that had no extradition treaty with the U.S. and live out her life in discreet but comfortable obscurity.

  Obscurity?

  Cushing had poured her life’s passion and energy into helping Harmon advance; in return, he had supported her Air Force career and had promised that she could ride his coattails to the top.

  My future was supposed to be spent enthroned in fame and power, not *bleeping* obscurity.

  Cushing couldn’t reconcile herself to the timing or means of Harmon’s death, either.

  Jackson! It was Jackson who was supposed to drop dead from a heart attack—not Harmon! She’d known Harmon for decades, had worked in the field with him, had marveled at his rise. He had been brilliant. A meticulous operator. So, what had gone wrong?

  Cushing went over the final seconds of her last conversation with Harmon. And remembered.

  “I heard something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like someone is here. In the SCIF with me.”

  “How could someone be in the SCIF with you? Isn’t it locked?”

  “Uh . . . sir, I think she’s here.”

  “She who? What—you mean her?”

  Cushing nodded, then shook her head and whispered, “Yes. Her. Gemma Keyes.” Somehow, Keyes had overheard everything. She had either warned the President or taken matters into her own hands.

  “Yes, you, Gemma Keyes. It appears that I’ve vastly underestimated you, you *bleeping* sneak. I should have taken care of you that very day—when you overheard our plans for Dr. Bickel in the conference room.”

  Cushing ground her teeth. “However, it’s not too late to rectify my mistake.”

  She changed into dark civvies and packed a bag. Pulled the SIMM card from her phone and dropped them both into her purse. Placed her DoD credentials next to them.

  In her clothes closet, Cushing pulled back the carpet and lifted a section of floorboard. From the small space below the subfloor, she withdrew a thick envelope stuffed with cash, two passports under aliases, and a Glock 21SF.

  ***

  I spent a sleepless night in my hotel room and took a cab to the airport early Sunday morning. As I approached the security checkpoint, I muttered, “Nano. It’s time to do your thing with my I.D.”

  Those were the first words I’d spoken to them since I left the Oval Office. They did not answer except to chirp their acknowledgment.

  The TSA officer squinted at my license photo, comparing it twice to my face. In the end, he passed me through, and I boarded my flight.

  Like the looping news segments on the Vice President’s life and death, inside me a string of questions played over and over.

  Jesus, the nanomites have no sense of right and wrong; they are machines without conscience. How can I live for you with them inside me? Won’t they continue to make decisions and do things I can’t control or approve of? How can I bear it, Lord? How can I? What am I to do?

  ***

  Genie Keyes stroked Jake’s fur. He’d taken to planting himself beside her whenever she sat in the living room, napping against her thigh while she worked. The rumble of his purr was pleasant. Soothing. Something about his warming presence calmed her, helped her to focus . . . on things other than herself.

  She rubbed the top of Jake’s head, and he leaned into her hand, eventually reaching up to lick her fingers. She smiled at the rough but gentle sensation of his tongue on her skin.

  What did Gemma mean, no one dared to pet Jake?

  She looked back to her laptop, to her inbox. Reread yet another rejection via email.

  The rejection hurt, but Genie wasn’t stupid. She recognized that rejection didn’t pain her the way it pained “normal” people, people with “normal” feelings. It wasn’t the personal aspect of the rejection that hurt: It was the blow to her pride, to her sense of superiority, to her narcissism.

  It was the sense of failure that rankled and galled her.

  I’ve never failed.

  Before.

  Genie had trouble coming to terms with failure.

  As it had so many times since Genie returned to Albuquerque, Zander’s voice spoke into her reveries: “I want you to see God differently than you do now—in fact, I want you to see yourself differently. The first step in coming to terms with God is acknowledging who and what we are.”

  “What we are,” Genie said aloud. Then she asked, “What am I?”

  Jake, still purring, placed one paw on her thigh and flexed his claws.

  “You think I’m a good scratcher, is that it? I know just where and how you like to be petted?”

  In typical cat fashion—in other words, for absolutely no rhyme or reason—Jake jumped from the couch and trotted away. A moment later, Genie heard the cat door snick open and closed.

  It bothered Genie that Jake had abandoned her.

  “What am I?” she repeated.

  “God isn’t asking for your ‘feelings.’ Rather, he is asking that you acknowledge your brokenness.”

  “My brokenness. Am I broken?”

  She knew she was broken, had known it from childhood. The more relevant point was that she didn’t care—because ‘not caring’ was the broken part.

  “He isn’t asking for your ‘feelings.’”

  “He isn’t asking me for my feelings.”

  She pursed her lips. “This is ridiculous. God doesn’t exist. If he did, he’d make himself a little better known, wouldn’t he?”

  “He is asking that you acknowledge your brokenness.”

  Genie shook her head. “I will never do that.”

  Then you will stay broken.

  Genie started and looked around; her mouth dried up. “Who said that?”

  Zander hadn’t said that; it wasn’t part of the sermon he’d preached her—of that Genie was certain: She had near-perfect recall of the conversation in his office. Maddening, frustrating, near-perfect recall. Every word, every nuanced phrase, every emphasis and pointed jab.

  But someone had spoken! The warning reverberated in the air around Genie.

  Then you will stay broken.

  Jake reappeared on the other side of the carpet. Sphinx-like, he sat—still and immobile, his great green eyes fixed on her

  “You didn’t say that!”

  The cat didn’t move, didn’t twitch, or blink—but his eyes seemed to speak.

  “If you didn’t say it, then who did?”

  The stare-off lasted a minute—until Jake stretched and wandered into the kitchen. Genie heard him crunching the dry food that smelled like wet, moldy gym socks.

  “Disgusting.”

  “He is asking that you acknowledge your brokenness.”

  Genie was surprised to discover that she was trembling. “No.”

  Then you will stay broken.

  She leapt from the couch. “Stop! Stop it!”

  But the conversation in Zander’s office would not stop. It replayed in Genie’s head yet again.

  “Your feelings are broken, Genie.”

  “You’re mistaken. The fact is, I don’t have feelings.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. You have feelings—but they’re all messed up. You don’t feel love, but you do feel superiority over and disdain for o
thers. Those are feelings. You don’t feel empathy or compassion; however, you get excited and feel powerful when you cause someone pain. Those are feelings, too, Genie—but they are broken feelings. Wrong feelings. Deviant feelings—but feelings nonetheless.”

  Again: “Your feelings are broken, Genie.”

  Genie screamed aloud, “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” She screamed until her voice was raw and her head pounded. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  When she was spent, she collapsed on the couch.

  “He is asking that you acknowledge your brokenness.”

  She could only manage a ragged, rough, “Stop! Stop it!”

  Then you will stay broken.

  ***

  Imogene Cushing stared at her cell phone and its SIMM card. She’d pulled the card before leaving her apartment. Then she’d retrieved her second car—one she owned under an assumed name—and checked into a motel of dubious reputation, paying cash for a week. The problem was that she needed a specific phone number, and that contact information was stored in her phone.

  The moment I power on my phone, they may be tracing the cell signal—if. If they are already looking for me.

  She snarled at the irony of the moment. After all these months of being the hunter, am I now the hunted?

  Her rage grew stronger. Gemma Keyes. She hated the woman. She hated Gemma Keyes to the bitter, frustrated core of her being.

  Cushing drove forty miles east on I-40, took the exit at the far end of Moriarty, and pulled off into a daycare parking lot where she saw no surveillance cameras. In a far corner of the lot, she inserted the SIMM card into her phone and turned it on. As it powered up, a number of voice mails pinged their arrival.

  She ignored them and focused on jotting down the contact information she needed. When she finished, she would drop the phone into a drain or a trashcan. At the last second, Cushing listened to the voice mails. As she presumed, the messages were all from Agent Trujillo asking her to call or otherwise check in.

  Sorry to disappoint you, my dear.

  She pulled the SIMM card from the phone and snapped it in half. Instead of getting back on the freeway, Cushing turned down a road that ran parallel to it. She tossed her phone and the broken SIMM card into a ditch as she drove by and, taking a long, winding back route where she was fairly confident her car wouldn’t be picked up on any surveillance cameras, headed toward the city.

  I must make a move before it is too late.

  It was nearing midnight Sunday when Cushing used her keycard to enter the AMEMS building and her office. She had gambled on her base and building access being active, had staked this risky part of her plan on her belief that no one on her team would have had the stones to report her missing or would have taken it upon themselves to inactivate a two-star general’s security clearances.

  Not this early in her desertion.

  She logged in to her computer and found what she was looking for: the UPS shipment information for Gemma Keyes’ escrima stick order and the geolocator tracking app. She transferred the shipment information to one of her team member’s tablets and synced up its geolocator tracking app, switching on the geolocator tags to test them, turning them off when she was assured of her control of the tags.

  She was in and out of the building in less than fifteen minutes.

  Back in her cheap hotel, Cushing powered on the tablet and checked the shipment’s status: Arrived at Destination in Albuquerque. Awaiting Customer Pickup.

  “Excellent. Come and get your order, Gemma. Do, please.”

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 24

  Monday morning, I snuck out the back door, over the wall into the alley, and went for a long run to clear my head.

  The nanomites didn’t cover me, and I didn’t ask them to.

  I just jogged, and the nanomites were silent. After weeks—months now—of continual “white noise” and ongoing conversations with the nanomites, the stillness in my head was unsettling, but I pushed that troubled feeling down.

  I finished my sixth mile, then headed to the UPS store to retrieve the order containing my new escrima sticks. Appearing fully Gemma Keyes, I retrieved the package slip from my mailbox, walked up to the guy at the counter, and presented my slip.

  “Um, I have a package waiting.”

  “Sure thing,” the guy answered.

  He gave me less than a cursory glance before looking up my package. He went to the back room to retrieve the package, scanned the pickup into his computer, and handed over a narrow, two-foot-long box.

  “Have a good day.”

  “Thanks; you, too.”

  I left the store and jogged home.

  Normal life had never felt so abnormal.

  ***

  In the vacuum of Cushing’s unexplained absence, her team looked to Janice Trujillo for direction, so Trujillo sent the team out into the field to run drills and errands. When they returned, she assigned them busy work—any make-work diversion to keep them from staring at her and asking questions she couldn’t answer.

  Trujillo glanced from her laptop to the muted television in the corner of the conference room. The closed captions running across the bottom of the screen hinted that an announcement setting the date and time of the Vice President’s funeral was forthcoming. It would be a state affair with all the pomp and circumstance due a sitting Vice President.

  Trujillo stared at her email’s inbox. Nothing. Not a single new message. She slammed the laptop closed and rubbed her eyes. Shook her head in frustration.

  Trujillo had known from the start that Cushing’s operation would be covert, “black.” In fact, when she’d been assigned to Cushing’s unit, the orders had come via courier without signature—because plausible deniability was every politician and career bureaucrat’s modus operandi.

  No paper trail, no incrimination. No responsibility.

  Standard procedure in covert ops.

  Whoever had authorized Cushing’s mission was sticking to their cover.

  Trujillo examined herself: She could have refused this assignment; however, covert campaigns were what she’d trained for and signed on to. So, she’d reported to General Cushing in Albuquerque and blindly followed her orders.

  Fifteen months later, with Cushing in the wind, Trujillo regretted her decision.

  Was Cushing in hiding nearby? Or had she bugged out? Fled the country?

  Left the country? I doubt it. Not Cushing’s style to leave a job unfinished.

  All Trujillo knew was that on the same day the Vice President died, Cushing had failed to show up to a meeting she herself had set and had, since then, remained incommunicado, utterly ‘off the grid.’

  What perturbed Trujillo was that the two events—the VP’s death and Cushing’s disappearance—couldn’t possibly be connected.

  Could they?

  I have zero guidance and no chain of command. No one to whom I can report my concerns over Cushing’s bizarre behavior.

  Well, somebody had to be “up the chain,” right? Someone had to be paying attention. Sooner or later, Trujillo would receive new orders. Until then, she intended to stay alert and keep her team intact and her nose clean.

  At the same time, Trujillo was worried—worried that she would take the fall for whatever laws Cushing had broken, that the blame would come crashing down on her head.

  She reopened her laptop and stared at the notification on the screen: Someone had picked up Kathy Sawyer’s shipment of escrima sticks. According to Cushing’s order, Trujillo was supposed to wait two hours, then activate the geolocators attached to the shipment.

  How wrong is it that I want, in the worst way, to ignore Cushing’s order?

  Her cell phone vibrated. Trujillo eyed it with mistrust. The caller I.D. on her phone listed no name, only a number. A number with a Maryland area code.

  Leery of who it might be, Trujillo pressed the answer button. She said nothing.

  “Agent Janice Trujillo?”

  “Who’s calling?”r />
  “Is this Janice Trujillo?”

  “Your phone has no caller I.D. As I said, who wants to know?”

  She heard a low chuckle.

  “I can tell that we’re at an impasse, so I’ll go first. I will assume, for the sake of argument, that I have the correct number and that you are Agent Janice Trujillo. Good morning, Agent Trujillo; my name is Axel Kennedy, Secret Service.”

  “What can I do for you, Agent Kennedy?” Trujillo’s distrust bled through the line.

  “I’m the lead agent on the President’s protective detail.”

  Trujillo didn’t believe him for a second. “The President’s protective detail. Right.”

  Trujillo heard him murmur to someone on the other end, “She doesn’t believe me, sir.”

  A second voice came on the line. One she recognized.

  “Agent Trujillo, this is Robert Jackson.”

  Sweat poured from Trujillo. “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Are you convinced it’s me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good. In that case, will you allow me to vouch for Agent Kennedy?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I’ll put him back on the line.”

  Kennedy took the phone. “Agent Trujillo?”

  Chastised, Trujillo answered, “Yes. I apologize, Agent Kennedy. How can I help?”

  “Don’t worry about it; I’m using an unauthorized phone on purpose. Agent Trujillo, we’re looking for General Cushing.”

  Still sweating on the outside, Trujillo’s mouth now went dry. “Take a number, Agent Kennedy. General Cushing has been incommunicado since skipping a meeting Saturday morning. She has failed to answer her phone or respond to a number of texts and voice mails.”

  “I see.” He murmured her response to another person, the President, Trujillo assumed, and they conferred in muffled words.

  When Kennedy came back on the line, he said, “Agent Trujillo, what can you tell us of Cushing’s mission in Albuquerque?”