Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  Puwolsky and Stanzer would never know what hit them.

  M.D. looked back down at the P section of his list. The Plan required more attention. McCutcheon sat back, closed his eyes, and allowed the worn padded cushions of the oval restaurant booth to support his full weight. He was tired. He was hungry. He had much to do. He also hoped the waitress would hurry up and deliver his salad. With a little luck, she’d be smart enough to bring him a nice, tall glass of water, as well.

  The diner’s front door opened and three men dressed in jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and work boots entered. They grabbed a booth four spots down from McCutcheon and debated about whether to go for the chicken-fried steak or the meat loaf. Nothing to worry about, M.D. thought, and he returned to considering his plans. Pinching a car would be easy, he knew, because all security measures were only as strong as their weakest link.

  What was an automobile’s weakest link? Its key, of course.

  M.D. had been taught that once automobile manufacturers began installing engine immobilizer systems into all their vehicles, stealing cars had become ridiculously hard. It’s why Stanzer never bothered to train McCutcheon in the art of hot-wiring a ride. Modern cars contained uniquely programmed microchips in their ignition keys, a technology super tough to crack or circumvent. No key, no start, no way around it.

  Yet even though technology had advanced leaps and bounds, people (Stanzer explained) were as gullible as ever.

  “Why steal a car?” Stanzer said. “All you really need to do is have someone hand you the key?”

  “And how do you do that?”

  “Through social engineering.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s the art of exploiting human vulnerabilities,” Stanzer said. “And for the modern-day soldier, it’s a must-have tool in your arsenal of weapons.”

  Hour upon hour of studying behavioral psychology made Stanzer believe he understood most people better than they understood themselves.

  “Still not sure I get it,” M.D. said.

  “Look at it like this,” Stanzer replied. “Think of yourself as a hacker of humans. What three qualities do most human beings possess?”

  “Eyes, ears, and a nose.”

  “Very funny,” Stanzer said. “Number one, most people view themselves as good. Number two, most people view themselves as helpful. And number three, most people want to be liked. Choose your target according to these parameters and then exploit that person’s weakness.”

  McCutcheon shook his head. “You’re evil.”

  “I’m effective,” Stanzer replied. “There’s a big difference.” Stanzer went on to explain how lots of people possessed car keys, and that all M.D. needed to do if he ever found himself in search of a ride was to find someone to hand him a key. McCutcheon scanned the restaurant.

  Hmm, maybe the waitress?

  “Here’s a double-size salad for you, honey. I combined it all into one large bowl to make it easier for ya. That okay?”

  “Perfect,” M.D. said. “Thank you.”

  “And for some reason, I don’t have you fixed for a soda pop,” she said handing McCutcheon a tall glass of water.

  He smiled. “With a wedge of lemon. You’ve got my number, don’t you?”

  She returned the grin. “Yes I do. Need anything else?”

  “Actually,” McCutcheon said, “would you mind changing the channel? Stories like this depress me.”

  The waitress spun around and looked at the television screen hanging off the wall.

  BREAKING NEWS: JAILS IN CRISIS:

  RAMPANT ABUSE, RAMPANT NEGLECT

  “You got it, hon,” she answered. “World’s got some good stuff in it, too, but you wouldn’t know it from watching the TV.”

  “That’s true,” M.D. said.

  “Me, I try to look for the good in folks,” the waitress said. “Try to do it each and every day. Flat out lose my mind on this planet if I didn’t.”

  She clicked off the television and M.D. thought about her last words. Looked for the good in people every day, did she?

  “Oh, one more question,” M.D. began before she walked away.

  “Sure thing,” the waitress said. “Anything, honey.”

  McCutcheon took a second before making his next request. “What’s the biggest hotel in the area? You know, the largest one that’s nearby?”

  “Oh, that would be the Grand,” the waitress responded. “Only a few blocks away.”

  “Think they’re full today?”

  “Well,” she said, “there’s a dentist convention down at the Lansing Center this week. Few thousand folks talking about teeth for the next three days. They might have some rooms left. You want me to call for you?”

  “You’re too nice,” M.D. said with a grin. “But I have my phone right here. I’ll just Google it. And by the way,” M.D. added as he punched his fork into a big bowl of leafy greens. Scamming the waitress out of her car wouldn’t be right. Only a jackass would socially engineer a working woman like her. “This looks really good.”

  “We aim to please,” she said before disappearing back into the kitchen. McCutcheon plunked a bite of food in his mouth and gazed back down at the screen of Krewls’s cell phone.

  Eat slowly, he told himself. All the answers will come soon enough.

  It wasn’t long before M.D. cooked up a plan to score a car and then drive it to the bus station in Kalamazoo, 75.8 miles away. Obtaining a motorcycle afterward, he realized, would be something he could easily take care of on the Greyhound via the Internet before he napped. Still there was the bigger issue of how to ensnare Puwolsky and terminate Stanzer. Each would be difficult, he knew. Each for different reasons.

  M.D. plugged the phone charger into the wall so he could juice Jeffrey’s cell to max capacity, and then set up a news alert on Krewls’s phone. If any information bubbled up across the Web about a prison break, the cell would flash an immediate notification.

  So far it appeared Jeffrey had remained quiet. Probably would for a while, too, but M.D. knew it was only a matter of time before Stanzer discovered McCutcheon had escaped. To orchestrate a plan to eliminate a covert operative guaranteed that the colonel would follow up in order to make sure all the i’s had been dotted and t’s properly crossed. M.D. might be free for the moment, but the clock was undoubtedly ticking.

  His best defense, he knew, would be to play offense. Attack the two men and bring the battle to them. After a few more of forkfuls of salad, McCutcheon began to cobble the ideas together. His first order of business, however, before he could launch any sort of offensive, would be to cover his flank. He knew he wanted to attack his enemy’s greatest weakness, but he also knew that their first order of business would be to attack his. Stanzer, once he got news about McCutcheon’s escape, would without a doubt be thinking in this manner.

  Before advancing any further, M.D. would need to double back.

  He thought about calling home, but couldn’t risk the phone lines being tapped, so for the next thirty minutes M.D. toggled back and forth between his two cells and his fork, setting into motion details of a new plan as he ate his meal. Having cell phones, he realized, was far more valuable to him than owning guns. Funny, he thought, how the aims of battle had remained the same for centuries, but the weaponry with which warriors could attack had changed greatly.

  M.D. finished his food, paid his check, and left the waitress a hundred-dollar bill for a tip. Krewls would have wanted it that way, he told himself with a smile. Next, he exited the diner and walked three blocks east to the Grand Hotel, a large beige-colored building with tall, vast columns and stately archways. M.D. spent ten minutes in the opulent lobby, a bustling place filled with bellhops in uniforms and businesspeople walking across marble floors. He searched for his target.

  A middle-aged man graying at the temples? No.

  A husky guy, early thirties, wearing glasses? Possible, not ideal.

  Then he appeared, the guy he wanted. Male, red vest, wavy hair, early
twenties, looked like a guy who smoked pot on the weekends.

  McCutcheon studied his mark for eleven minutes to get a sense of his workflow. In a hotel this busy with such a steady stream of people checking in and checking out, the sense of organized chaos would be an ally in his quest to dupe the Grand Hotel’s valet parking attendant. Three minutes later the right moment appeared and McCutcheon sprung on his prey.

  “Hey, man,” M.D. said briskly, approaching the wavy haired valet. “My boss just left a file folder in the trunk.”

  The twenty-something-year-old looked sideways at McCutcheon.

  “The blue Chrysler,” M.D. said. “You just parked it.”

  The parking attendant looked down at his hands. He held three different sets of keys.

  “Yeah, that one right there,” M.D. said pointing at a black key ring with the Chrysler emblem blazing from the center. “Don’t you remember me, we just pulled up?”

  “Uhm, you got the ticket?” he asked.

  M.D. searched his pockets. “Aw shit, I didn’t get it from him. Look,” M.D. said. “All I need is to get in and out of the trunk.” McCutcheon flashed a Can-ya-help-a-fella-out look. “Be back in like two minutes.”

  The valet considered what to do as more cars lined up waiting to be parked.

  “Here ya go,” the attendant said handing McCutcheon the keys. “It’s on the third floor.”

  “Third floor? Got it. Thanks.”

  “No problem.” The valet hustled off to the next car. “Just leave the keys on the counter if I’m not here when you get back.”

  “You got it, dude,” M.D. said with a friendly wave. “Appreciate it, buddy.”

  McCutcheon took the stairs to the third floor, beeped the key ring to unlock the door, and turned on the ignition, the proud new owner of a navy blue Chrysler. By the time the hotel had even noticed the car was missing, M.D. figured, he’d already have dumped the car and be sitting on the bus.

  He exited the garage, turned north on Elm Avenue, and made his way toward the highway heading east. It was just like Stanzer had said: “Why hot-wire a ride when you can simply find a mark to hand you the keys?”

  Stanzer pulled out a chair, wooden, no cushion, and set down his drink on the brown table. His skim-milk latte, steam rising from the top, would need a few moments to cool. Stanzer hated skim-milk lattes. Thought they were for pansies. He’d only ordered it so that he’d have a beverage in his hand that would enable him to blend in with the rest of the café crowd. The colonel missed the days of shadowy garages and get-togethers late at night under freeway overpasses, but they’d long since passed for the men who ran covert operational units for the federal government. In the modern era, the murky world of black opps ran on caffeine.

  “This is why the world hates us,” Stanzer said to the man he was meeting. “Because we invented five-dollar cups of coffee. All war boils down to economics. Who the hell can afford these things?”

  “A tip has come in.”

  “A tip?” Stanzer said taking a seat. Three-star general Montgomery Evans took a sip off of his double-shot caramel macchiato and nodded his head.

  “If word of your unit gets out,” General Evans continued. “It would be, how shall I put this? Unsavory.”

  “It’s not getting out.”

  “But if it does…”

  “Don’t worry,” Stanzer said. “It won’t.”

  A pretty woman with long legs and shapely hips swished by in a blue dress. Both the general and the colonel remained quiet until she completely passed.

  “This tip,” Stanzer asked. “I assume it’s been safely intercepted?”

  “Safely is a dicey word when it comes to the Web.”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  “That’s what bothers me,” the general said. “It was almost too easy to trace.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Came in from Detroit,” the general said. “Via an e-mail off the desktop computer of a DPD narcotics unit.”

  Stanzer raised the latte to his lips, took a sip, and then put it back down, a scowl of disapproval for the entire coffee industry on his face.

  “You traced it right to the machine?” he asked.

  “Directly,” the general replied.

  “And it’s not a setup? No Internet relay schemes to make it appear as if it came from a location that it really didn’t originate from?”

  “It’s been confirmed,” the general said. “Completely legit. Came straight off one of their officer’s desktops.”

  “Odd,” Stanzer said weighing the news.

  “You’d at least think cops would know how to mask their communications if they wanted to remain anonymous in this day and age,” General Evans replied. “This guy used a fake Gmail address and thought that’d be enough to keep him in the shadows.”

  “No DarkNet? No TOR? You’re people are sure?”

  “No browser bundling whatsoever. Just a straightforward fake Gmail account created under an assumed identity. Username was…” General Evans extended his arm and showed Stanzer a piece of paper. “‘TTheTTerminal TTerminator.’ Double t’s everywhere.”

  “Catchy,” Stanzer said.

  “So the question I’m asking myself is,” General Evans continued, “why would a DPD narcotics officer rat you and your clandestine operation out by name? It’s like some sort of whistle-blowing attempt.”

  “They cited me?” Stanzer said.

  “Specifically,” the general answered. “Put a white-hot spotlight on you. It’s the absolute intent of this message. Its author clearly wants you torched.”

  Stanzer considered the information. A DPD narcotics officer. An attempt to out his unit. Stanzer targeted by name. There could only be one link.

  McCutcheon. Too coincidental to be anything otherwise. Stanzer rose from his chair.

  “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I had better go direct my full attention to this matter.”

  “Indeed,” the general said. “And for God’s sake, man, make sure it stays quiet. We need to keep what we’re doing around here buried. With all this hacking going on everywhere I’m personally considering going back to pagers.”

  “Understood, sir,” Stanzer said. “You have my word.”

  “Colonel, could you please make sure you speak your answers into the microphone,” the senator from Nebraska said. “Remember, we are filming this.”

  “I said,” Stanzer repeated, leaning closer to the mike, “there are currently no active agents under the legal age of eighteen years old working under my authority.”

  Stanzer, dressed in his full uniform, pressed pants, polished shoes, shiny bars on his collar, sat at a beige-colored conference table in a chilled room taking questions from a panel of three—two men, one woman—each dressed in a shade of navy blue, the standard Washington, D.C. color for business attire. Though there was no one else in attendance, a video camera captured every word of the proceedings.

  “But you did have such an agent, once upon a time, correct?” asked the senator from his center seat.

  “Is that a question or an allegation?” Stanzer replied.

  “It’s a question.”

  “Because if it was an allegation it would require proof,” Colonel Stanzer said. “And I am quite confident that there is no such proof that any agent of the sort you are describing exists.”

  “Well, where did he go?” asked the man on the right. His gold-rimmed spectacles and a neatly trimmed mustache gave the impression of a meticulous person, the kind of bureaucrat who paid close attention to details and took particularly exacting notes.

  “Where did who go?” Stanzer asked.

  “Stop the games, Colonel. They are tedious.”

  “We have a name, you know,” said the female member of the panel from her chair on the left. “McCutcheon Daniels. Known as ‘Bam Bam’ on the streets. He served in your unit, correct?”

  “Is that question or an allegation?” Stanzer said. “Because, if that is an allegation, it would require proof in
the form of…”

  Senator Ackersleem slammed his hand down on the desk and his nameplate went flying.

  “You know what really sickens me about all this, Colonel? As a former military man myself, it’s the fact that as a leader you are supposed to care about your men. You are supposed to have their backs. But you,” the senator raged, “all we see here in this report is a person who appears to have buried his own man somewhere in the great unknown, because the thing he cares most about is his own career. What do you have to say to that?”

  Stanzer leaned forward to make sure his words would be clearly recorded by the microphone.

  “I have no connections, nor have I ever had any connection, to any agent named McCutcheon ‘Bam Bam’ Daniels.”

  The senator threw up his arms in disgust.

  “Are there any other agents in this covert unit?” the woman asked.

  “What unit?” the colonel replied.

  “Have you trained any other underage soldiers for the purposes of war?” asked the man on the right.

  “What soldiers?” the colonel said.

  “I am deeply troubled by this whole thing,” the senator said. “Who is looking out for this child’s welfare right now? Who is providing for his safety? What is he doing, who is he working for, where is he?”

  “As the records clearly show, whoever this McCutcheon Daniels once was, he has now disappeared, Senator Ackersleem,” Stanzer said in a smooth and even tone. “But if you’d like me to try to find him…”

  The senator pointed to an armed guard by the door. “Get this officer out of my face.”

  Stanzer rose from his seat, turned, and calmly made his way toward the exit.

  “And shut that damn camera off, would you,” the senator barked. Eight seconds later the screen went black.

  Stanzer rang the doorbell of a green-and-white, five-bedroom, four-bathroom house in the Detroit suburb of Plymouth. It featured a three-car garage and pool in the backyard. After forty-five seconds of no one answering, he pressed the bell a second time and stared up into the security camera that gave eyes over the front door. Though it took another twenty ticks off the clock before someone arrived, a man with a damp towel draped over his shirtless shoulders finally answered, a displeased look on his ruddy-cheeked face.