by S L Shelton
The waitress brought two more bottles anyway and Seifert pulled out a few bills to pay her.
When she left, he leaned over and looked at the small TV on the bar inside. The news of Air Force One’s crash and the Vice President’s assassination had covered every screen we’d encountered on the trip south. Like Seifert, I was distracted by it, but I knew that what we were doing had some connection to the assassinations. Or at least that’s what I’d pieced together based on my spotty memory.
“It won’t do any good to worry about that,” I said, turning for a glimpse at the screen.
“Maybe. But since there’s no way I’m not going to worry, I might as well go all in.”
I nodded my sympathy to him. “Have they found the President yet?”
“Nope.” He turned back to me. “You don’t think Marsh’s group was in on that do you?”
My memory of Lieutenant Marsh and the splinter group he belonged to was incomplete at best. I remembered that Jo Ann Zook was their tech, and Nick was their CIA liaison, but I couldn’t remember how I knew that or who they were.
“I don’t know,” I replied, staying as honest as possible. “Nothing we can do about it from here either way.”
Seifert turned away from the TV and glanced at me over his shoulder, measuring something with his eyes, then turned back. “We’re running low on backup.”
“This is the last piece of the puzzle,” I said, though I was unsure why. “If we get this guy, the whole conspiracy comes crashing down.”
Seifert nodded without looking away from the TV.
Each time I began to doubt my course, a new memory would miraculously explode into my mind and convince me otherwise…and my “devil’s advocate” would reassure me of the plan…my plan, apparently.
Why can’t I remember anything when I want to?
“What do you think they’re doing up there for so long?” Seifert asked, interrupting my internal agony for a moment.
“Maybe they’re teaching him Spanish.” I took another sip and looked up at the window.
“They could have taught him Mandarin by now. It’s been almost two-and-a-half-hours.”
Almost as if he’d been heard, the curtains parted, and Mr. Goughin peered out into the darkness.
“Well hello there,” Seifert muttered.
“Watch the lobby doors. I think they’re done.”
Seifert took his beer and walked to the edge of the patio. He leaned against the telephone pole our tarp cover hung from and tried to look inconspicuous—he failed. He looked like a cheap private eye who only barely passed his investigator exam. If he’d stared at the door more intensely, even I’d have thought he was casing the place to rob it.
A few moments later, the two escorts exited the front of the hotel and walked to a waiting sedan at the side of the main building. As they pulled away, Seifert turned and nodded.
Time to do it, I thought. I picked up my bag of equipment and joined Seifert, staring up at Goughin who still stood there peering into the night. “You ready?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, following my gaze to the window on the twenty-fifth-floor. “He looks relaxed.”
I patted Seifert on the arm as he set his beer on the ground. “A good Spanish lesson will do that.”
He chuckled, reaching into his bag. From inside he withdrew the small radio and switched it on before tucking it in his pocket.
I shook my head as he fished the wire for his earpiece through his shirt. “Right here on the street corner?”
Seifert looked around at the small shops and bars that lined the avenue. “Doesn’t seem anyone cares about much of anything down here.”
“You’d be surprised what people care about if someone comes asking questions with a few bucks in their pocket.”
He shrugged and walked the few feet to the side of the building to finish his task. After shaking his shirt back in place, he looked at me and grinned. “Let’s go pick up the Spanish student.”
Seifert walked away toward the side entrance of the hotel, and I toward the lobby. Standing at the curb, looking expectant of another visit from Mr. Good-Tipper, the valet watched, smiling as I neared.
It had cost only three hundred dollars to gain room number, morning routine, and sexual-guest identity for Mr. Goughin. I still didn’t have a first name, but that didn’t matter. Last name and room number were all I’d need.
I nodded to the valet as I entered the lobby. He couldn’t hide his disappointment that I didn’t approach him with another hundred dollar bill folded in my palm. The concierge, on the other hand, simply gave me a knowing nod as I passed, smiling as if I’d granted him membership in a secret society with the two hundred I’d given him.
Seifert would let me know when he reached the twenty-fifth-floor via the back stairwell—if our radios carried enough signal to penetrate the combined thickness of all the concrete between us. We had only tested them for distance, not interference.
I stepped into the elevator, but before it closed, I caught a glimpse of a man in a suit leaving the downstairs restaurant coming toward me. Too far to reach the elevator, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Nevertheless, it sent a warning shiver down my spine. When I reached the twenty-fourth-floor, I stepped off and walked over to the hotel directory hanging on the wall. The plastic cover provided a reflection from where I could watch the elevator displays behind me without looking like that’s what I was doing.
A moment later, the elevator next to the one I’d come up in began to rise. It stopped on the twenty-second floor then continued up. I could tell by the slowing rise that it would stop on twenty-four before it had.
Another shiver passed between my shoulder blades and I stepped around the corner into the vending and ice machine room. As expected, the bell chimed announcing its arrival and two sets of steps exited onto the ceramic tile floor outside the lift.
I tensed, waiting for them to pass, the quiet shuffle of their feet on the carpet telling me how far they’d gone. Then, oddly, I heard only one set of footsteps.
I closed my eyes and tried to stretch out my senses. Where did the other set of feet go?
Hearing and feeling nothing, I stepped to the corner and edged my head past the plane of the wall. Standing inches away, looking right at me, stood a rugged-looking man with a crooked nose, broken sometime in his past and never properly healed.
My first instinct was to strike, but then the oddest thing happened…I opened my mouth without meaning to. “Mark Gaines.”
The man put his hand over my mouth and shoved me back into the vending room. “Why don’t you just broadcast it over the intercom?”
I reached up and grabbed his wrist, eliciting a panicked expression on his face as I lowered his hand from my mouth. His distress seemed to dissipate when I released him.
“Why are you here?” he asked in a raspy whisper.
“Panama is beautiful this time of year,” I said, still not quite sure if I knew this person, or if I should be sharing anything with him. “Why are you here?”
“You think that’s funny?!” he snapped. “We came here as soon as we figured out who the accountant was…just like you told us to.”
“Ah.”
A wave of anger rippled across his face. “Actually, you didn’t bother telling me. You just told Storc and Jo what you had in mind. So, yeah…thanks for trusting us, you asshole.”
“An oversight, surely,” I replied, taking my hand off the butt of the SIG under my shirt.
He shook his head. “Who else do you have with you?”
A muddled blur of memories surfaced associated with the name “Storc” and “Jo”, revealing he and I were actually close friends. Why didn’t I know that? “Where are Storc and Jo?”
“Jo and Marsh are holed up in a temporary safehouse in Tennessee, and Storc’s in a room two floors down tapped into the hotel surveillance system,” Mark said, relaxing his tone a tick. “You didn’t answer my question.”
I gave him a gentle push away f
rom me, creating a more reasonable semblance of personal space. “Majesty is with me.”
“What happened to Mac and Momma?”
Momma? The face of a black-clad, square-jawed, middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair jumped into my mind, accompanied by the whispered name, “John Temple, CIA.”
“Not with us,” I said.
I could see the agitation in Mark’s clenched jaw. “What the fuck is up with you? You’re more like Temple every day, you know that? Why did he hand himself over?”
“You’d have to ask him. I wasn’t there.”
Mark shook his head and pinched the bridge of his crooked nose between his fingers.
I pushed myself out of the corner and went around him. “I was on my way up to the twenty-fifth floor when I caught sight of you. So, if you’re done…?”
He shook his head with a smug grin and stepped back, inviting me to step out with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “Help yourself,” he said.
I turned and walked out.
“Of course, you might want to know about the new entourage that checked into the three rooms surrounding your target today,” he said to my back.
I stopped and turned to him. “Did you get that Majesty?”
“I did. And he’s right,” came Seifert’s reply through my earbud. “They have a guy in both stairwells on that floor. I can’t get close.”
I breathed in deeply and let it out slowly through my nose as I turned the problem over in my head. After a second I nodded. “What room are you in?”
Mark grinned. “Twenty-two-forty-one.”
“Majesty, that’s an abort. Meet us in twenty-two-forty-one.”
“Roger. Oscar Mike.”
“Okay,” I said, turning away. “Let’s go see Storc.”
fifteen
Sunday, May 8th
1:15 a.m. on May 8th — US Consulate, Amsterdam, Netherlands
JOHN TEMPLE adjusted his legs with both hands as a shooting pain woke the nerves in his lower back. He hadn’t done his exercises in more than twenty-four hours, and aside from a trip to the bathroom to change his colostomy bag he hadn’t left his room in more than twelve hours. He sat, glued to the television, looking for updates on the crash of Air Force One.
Reports weren’t optimistic.
Despite the growing number of search and rescue personnel, there has been no indication the president made it off of Air Force One before its crash. Initial eyewitness accounts of an aerial battle have been brushed aside by federal officials who, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have said the President’s aircraft suffered a major catastrophic failure. There is, as of yet, no official speculation as to the cause of that failure. But this tragedy in conjunction with the broad daylight attack on the Vice President’s motorcade, has many in congress calling for a pause in all business during this, our most dramatic constitutional crisis in history.
Temple massaged his thighs one at a time as station after station reported on the same video images, cycling between video of the attack on the Vice President’s limousine, depriving us first of that office, then still photos of the Air Force One wreckage and crash site.
A knock on Temple’s door turned him in his chair as he hit mute on the TV remote. “Come in.”
Mac walked in, looking tired and old, carrying himself like a man of twice his years. “You can’t sleep either?”
Temple shook his head. “It looks like we were too late getting BeauLac into custody.”
Mac walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. “So, this is what it looks like when we don’t get it right,” he said, almost as if to himself. “I mean, it’s one thing to have a bunch of assholes shooting at someone like you and me…we sort of expect it. But damn.”
“There’s no worse feeling than knowing what’s going on and not being able to convince the right people,” Temple said.
“Or knowing who the right people are.”
Temple nodded then turned the TV off. “How’re you feeling?”
“Well, I took my first shit since getting shot, so that’s a plus.”
Temple chuckled.
“Hurt like hell though. Don’t think I’ll try again for a while,” Mac added with a sideways grin.
“Could be worse. You could’ve been accessorized with a shit bag like me.”
Mac nodded, then an apologetic expression popped his face up, obviously, realizing that might have been insensitive.
Temple shook his head. “Don’t. I don’t need that kind of pity.”
“We’re a pitiful pair though.”
“That we are.”
Mac stood and walked slowly to the door. “Do you think I’ll be tried as a deserter or a traitor?”
“Does it make a difference?”
Mac looked back. “Under the UCMJ it does. One is prison, the other is hanging.”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that, but if it does, I know some people. We can arrange for a go bag at the back door.”
Mac shook his head. “And me with only twelve years to go before retirement.”
Temple laughed. “Don’t give up yet.”
“I’m too tired to care about it right now,” he said as he opened the door. “I’m gonna go get a couple of hours of rack time.”
“I’ll be here,” Temple lied.
After Mac left and closed the door, Temple turned the TV on once more. A new, “Breaking News”, banner filled the lower quarter of the screen.
Official Sources: Speaker of the House, Robert Trembly, just sworn in as 45th President of the United States by Chief Justice at undisclosed, secure location.
“So that’s what all the maneuvering was about,” Temple muttered. “Scott was right…again.”
He reached into a hidden slot beneath his seat and pulled out a phone wrapped in a plastic bag. After inserting the battery and powering it up, he tapped out a text message: “If Wolfe still in play, all bets off. Not betting against him. Fingers crossed.”
After sending the encrypted message, he removed the battery and stowed it in its hiding place. He stared at the TV for several minutes more until he caught his eyes betraying him, closing without willing them to.
He backed his chair up to the side of his bed and pulled himself onto the mattress. He looked at his bag sitting by the door, wondering if Mac had even seen it. If it had been Scott, that would have been the first thing he’d have noticed, followed by the uncomfortable next question, “Where ya headed?”
Someone from the Consulate would come and get him in the next hour or so. Having friends at State had paid off, but he felt bad he’d be leaving Mac behind. He deserved an honest answer. But at this point in the game, an honest answer could draw too much attention, and there was no way to smuggle a wounded SEAL through official channels.
“It is what it is,” he muttered as he closed his eyes.
After reaching over to turn off the light, he sat and listened to the noises in the building. He could already hear the day shift guards, up and preparing for their day. With lockdown in place for at least another twenty-four hours, there remained a slim hope of a live extraction of the accountant. No one outside of the consulate had yet been briefed on the information that BeauLac had provided.
If I’d known they were going to take the White House out this soon, I would have left you alone, Scott, he thought as he closed his eyes. “I hope I didn’t screw you too bad.”
**
7:25 a.m. — Via Israel, near The Sheraton Grand, Panama City, Panama
I had an army. It was a small army, but I’d added six members to an Op that previously only numbered two. “Optimistic” still wasn’t a word I’d use to describe the new arrangement, but “less pessimistic” would certainly fit.
Along with the extra personnel came more weapons and equipment. Mark Gaines certainly knew how to gear up for an operation. All I had to do was keep him from micromanaging every detail.
“Piper, Doc, you’re too far down the alley. Back up that delivery truck another ten ya
rds,” Gaines said into our earbuds.
“Roger, DJ. Backing up ten.”
Seifert looked at me and rolled his eyes.
“I know,” I muttered. “But he did bring the firepower.”
“He’s gonna have the guys so keyed up before the strike, they’ll be paying more attention to their distances than what’s coming down the street.”
I nodded. “Good point.” I clicked my mic open. “Okay fellas, as soon as that truck is in place, we’re golden. Everyone is looking tight,” I said. “DJ, chat with me on channel three.”
Seifert smiled and nodded his gratitude as I switched my radio channel.
“Monkey Wrench, this is DJ.”
“DJ, my friend, my pal…calm the fuck down. You’re winding the guys up.”
In the ten seconds of silence that followed, I imagined Mark spewing a string of profanity in my name. “Roger. It looks tight now.”
“It does. You did a good job.”
“Don’t patronize me you smug prick.”
I chuckled. “I wasn’t.” After a few more seconds of silence, I clicked again. “Monkey Wrench out.”
Seifert bumped me with his elbow. “You broke his nose. What do you expect?”
I broke his nose?
He laughed at some unspoken joke. “Come to think of it, you broke Nick’s nose too. You have a talent for it.”
“We all having a calling in life.”
He adjusted his seat belt then reached for his coffee in the center console. “I’ll tell ya, these beaches have been calling me. When we’re done here, I’m taking some weather-station gig in the tropics to finish out my twenty.”
“That sounds like a good plan.”
He nodded then sipped his coffee. “Palm trees, fishing boats…” he muttered quietly. “Maybe a little dive and excursion shop.”
“You should call it ‘Majesty, Queen of the Dive’.”
He scoffed through his nose then appeared to think about it more seriously. He lifted his finger, mouth opening poised to speak when Storc’s voice popped through our earbuds.
