The Killing Collective

by Gary Starta

  He didn’t have much hope of buying time. The enemy knew by now they were only up against a handful of agents, but if he could keep them focused on what he was saying, there was a chance he could keep them from noticing anything else. It was worth a try, anyway.

  He waited to see what their next move would be. The silence was awful. Suddenly, Seacrest darted around the corner of the building and headed toward the back of the building, side-arm blazing. Fire resumed on both sides.

  I knew you would do that…

  Carter rolled on his side and remained on the ground to avoid being hit by the barrage of enemy fire that blasted out the remains of the front door and windows. Royals, still blinded, flipped around like a fish out of water.

  Seacrest heard the hostages screaming inside. Carter was still down, but she had an idea. She scooted around the back of the bank looking for an employee entrance.

  Bingo!

  She fired relentlessly at the unguarded doorway, throwing down her gun when the bullets were spent and grabbing another from her holster. Meanwhile, Carter had to make the enemy think he was out of cards to play, so he threw down his weapon, stood up very slowly with his arms over his head for the second time in fifteen minutes. Then, he waited for the enemies to show themselves.

  ***

  When speech was no longer possible, Carter and Seacrest often resorted to communicating through an instinct born of years spent together in the field, so she already knew what he wanted her to do. She raced through the employee entrance in back and pulled the fire alarm at the same time Carter charged the front entrance in a Hail Mary play. The alarm was supposed to send the enemy running out the front entrance thinking they’d been raided from the back.

  It worked. She found the hostages bound together, huddled behind a desk. If Carter failed to eliminate the enemy…

  I die with the hostages.

  Less than a moment later, the S.W.A.T. team showed up in response to the alarm she pulled. They successfully took out the hostiles and saved all but one of the hostages, who took a stray bullet in the head, but they were too late to save Carter. Despite his Kevlar vest, several bullets grazed arteries in his neck and legs. Even if the blood was staunched, no surgeon could ever repair them.

  Seacrest dropped down to the ground next to him and sobbed, even though they’d been able to pull off victory in a no-win-scenario bank robbery staged on Quantico’s academy grounds.

  There is no victory in death.

  Chapter Three

  An ancient suit of armor cast its long, lean shadow across the marble floor of the Cloisters. It was too prestigious, too powerful, and too damned awesome to be stuffed in a corner, yet there it was with Michael Santiago standing inside of it. Inside the metal skin, he wondered how many deaths its wearers claimed on bloody battlefields a thousand years ago when a thought struck him; all patrons were asked to be as generous as possible with their contributions, and Michael hadn’t made one. He sincerely regretted not supporting the arts.

  The Cloisters, a museum on New York’s Upper West Side, was devoted to medieval art but also represented European architectural pride. It contained four installed cloisters from French monasteries and abbeys that depicted hybrid creations of man and beast in pink marble relief.

  Michael Santiago failed to notice the beauty of the artist in the architecture. All he saw was its pointed Gothic arch and thick-walled exteriors resembling a fortress, a menacing reminder of simpler and more brutal times. Michael, who would have been seen as both treacherous and dull in any era, was here today to kill for profit, or so he thought. His plan was simple and direct because it never occurred to him that he could get caught. The Silver Man had chosen him for just that reason.

  The victim-to-be was the museum’s curator and, at the moment, the only other person inside the museum. A security guard had been bribed to leave the heavy abbey door ajar. The amount of money was impressive, but he was still a liability, and Michael knew he’d have to get rid of him, too.

  The Silver Man warned him to keep the blood to a minimum, so Michael was given chloroform to use on the security guard who was to be eliminated first. He was told to use it on the curator as well, but when a sword arrived at his apartment in a plain brown wrapper, he forgot all about his promise. The Silver Man had known Michael would not be able to resist using the ancient sword.

  Slinking through the door, he handed the man a heavy bag. The guard glanced at it, his first and last mistake. Michael slapped a handkerchief over his mouth and held it there. The guard dropped the bag of money and reached for his gun, but by then it was too late. The chloroform Michael made at home from acetone and bleach worked well. The security guard collapsed on the floor, out cold.

  Michael buried him alive in a park off Margaret Corbin Drive. The hole was so deep he’d never be able to claw his way to the surface before suffocating to death. A few hours later, a stray dog wandering past perked up his ears at a faint sound that reached up to him from underneath his big paws. They were the security guard’s final screams for help.

  Other than the chloroform, all Michael needed to bring was his arming sword. It had been delivered to him by the Silver Man’s assistant, a long, lean specter who wore the strange mask of a woman with very white, chiseled features who declined to speak in his presence. The mask gave Michael the willies, and he was hard to spook.

  The wealth amassed by the Silver Man was incalculable by Michael’s standards, and as a short-order cook, he needed the payoff desperately. Yet, he found he was unable to resist the voices in his head demanding he bury the bag of money alongside the security guard. It made perfect sense to him at the time, but now that he was back inside the museum to finish off the curator, he began to wonder why he agreed to terms that left him with nothing for his pains. The voices returned and promised to keep him company if he’d leave the thinking to them. That also sounded reasonable, so he redoubled his efforts and squashed all thought.

  Their echoes bounced off the inside of his body armor and dragged him down into an abyss of fury. The rush of adrenaline was becoming overpowering. He could have resisted the voices if he’d wanted to, but he didn’t. He gave in to the euphoria of invincibility, dominance, and the will to kill.

  This is your quest, Michael, as master protector of our community. It is what you were born for. Here, the curator moves freely among the most priceless art in existence, but he is a thief! He is stealing priceless national treasures and selling them to the highest bidder. He must be stopped, Michael; he is guilty. Guilty as charged! Kill the curator to protect the Collective. This is your duty, and you will not fail. You will not fail. You will not fail…

  Catapulted from the present to a distant echo of the past, Michael dreamed he was a great knight on a mission of great importance. He was to stop the enemy from stealing the king’s treasure. As defender of the realm, he was unafraid to perform his duty and was unflinchingly committed to the success of the mission. He waited for his victim to arrive with a heart of stone. Murder filled his mind, and mayhem flowed through his veins.

  This fortress has hidden a million secrets since it was first built. Now it will hide mine, too.

  A mere arm’s length away from him, the ring of a cell phone stopped the curator from inspecting the old armor. The sound jolted Michael back to the present. Sweat dripped down his face, but he was unable to wipe it away without moving. It was worse than having an itch he couldn’t scratch, but nothing mattered now except his mission.

  He forced himself to loosen his grip on the sword in his gloved hand as he listened to the end of the call. “Yes, dear, I’ll be home early enough to light the fireplace for our guests. Yes, of course I promise! Now I have to go, or I’ll never get there. Good-bye, dear.”

  A second later the sword plunged deep into his back so forcefully that it almost pushed through the other side. The curator looked like a broken wind-up toy. When Michael ripped the sword free, buckets of blood spurted from the wound and splattered the ceiling, walls,
and floor, leaving a pattern even a common murder mystery reader could decipher. He hadn’t thought about that possibility, but it was a dream, so he decided he didn’t have to worry about it.

  The fatally injured man staggered to his knees, unaware he’d been stabbed. In confusion, he looked at the blooming cabbage rose on the front of his shirt. Blood gurgled up from his throat in a pink, foamy mess. Michael was mesmerized by the look of surprise on his face as he began to drown in it. A long, agonizing moment later, Michael nudged the curator with an iron foot, and the old man fell forward onto his face, dead.

  The voices were firm with Michael. There was no more time. His mission was complete, and his orders were to go straight home to bed and forget what he’d done. It took some time and a lot of noise to get himself out of the suit of armor. There was one final command from the voices that faded away daybreak.

  Leave the sword here as a sign of your strength.

  He opened his hand and dropped it. It clattered to the floor, eager to find a new home in the outstretched arms of the iron man before returning to a glorious, forgotten past. Michael went home leaving behind a trail of ruby sneaker prints that led to a nearby subway station.

  ***

  Three Days Earlier…

  It was a couple of hours before the swearing-in ceremony. Stanford Carter and Jill Seacrest were going to pledge fidelity to their country after training in the fields and classrooms of Quantico. They were celebrating quietly in a Virginia bar. At least that’s what Carter thought they were doing.

  “It’s not too late to back out, you know.” Seacrest took him by surprise, which was not easily done.

  “Why should I back out now, after everything we went through to be here? Is anything wrong, Jill?”

  “No. Nothing. Just pre-commitment jitters, I guess.”

  “You? Pre-commitment jitters?” Carter was teasing her. Jill was always fully committed to any decision she made. This was a rare opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

  “I didn’t have the jitters before our wedding, Carter. Did you?”

  “No. I loved you then, and I love you now.”

  She looked away so Carter wouldn’t see her eyes glistening. “Good.”

  “Don’t you think I’m meant to be an F.B.I. agent?”

  “That’s neither here nor there, Carter. Do you want to be one?”

  “It was meant to be, that’s all. Do you honestly think I could fight fate, cheat destiny, and scoff at the will of the universe?”

  “Be serious, Carter. This is your last chance to change your mind. I’ll be in the lab most of the time, so I won’t be in any real danger, but what’s in it for you if you go back into the field?”

  Carter nodded. “You know I don’t dwell on what’s in it for me, Jill. I never did.”

  “We’ve talked about Atlas shrugging a thousand times, Carter. You don’t have to take this job. You don’t owe the world.”

  “I thought we were ready for a change of scenery.”

  “Don’t be flippant, Carter. You’ve put off this conversation over and over again, and we have to have it. It’s now or never.”

  Oh help me, Buddha. If you really do see everything, please take me now! Or perhaps you could arrange for the ceiling to fall in. It would be far less painful than having this discussion.

  He waited for an answer from the great beyond, but a rescue was extremely unlikely, so he just sat there, mute.

  Brace yourself…

  “Look, change is a normal way to grow…”

  You idiot! You had to mention change! Just keep your head down. Maybe you can still avoid discussing… feelings. Anything but that!

  “… but you’ve done your bit for God and country. Now you have choices. I just want to know if you really wanted to leave Boston to go back into the field or if it was because turning in those cops on the take made it impossible for you to stay there. Carter, what do you want out of this experience?”

  “Isn’t it enough to let the universe decide that for me?”

  “Carter!”

  His lighthearted tone vanished, and he spoke to her seriously, knowing that he could no longer avoid it. “I’m not kidding now, Jill. I didn’t overthink it. The decision just felt right. Can’t we leave it there?” That old line never worked before, and he knew it wouldn’t now, but he was grasping at straws.

  “No, we cannot.”

  They stared each other down, but Seacrest couldn’t keep a straight face for long. They burst into laughter and kept laughing until she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Carter, I want to say something to you, and you need to hear it. Honey, you always say the universe has a plan for everyone and a reason for our existence but that it’s up to us to find out what it is. Maybe the plan the universe has for you is for you to decide what roads you want to take and when you want to stop to rest awhile.”

  “O.K., honey, I’ll work on it. What I really need to know is why we exist, what our purpose is for being here as a race and as individuals, and what really happens to us when we die. Other than that, I prefer to take trips without a roadmap. It’s more fun that way.”

  “You could do with a little more fun, yourself, Carter. No one will lose respect for you if you loosen up once in a while. Try living your life instead of pondering it so much. That’s where the answers are. Dig deep and tell me what you want for now.”

  “For now, I think we should stay right where we are. There’s a new rookie in town, and she needs some seasoning. I’ll provide the salt. You bring the pepper. O.K.?”

  “O.K., Carter.”

  “What would I do without you, Jill?”

  “You’ll never know, Carter. As luck would have it, I’ve decided not to die. I made that decision last Thursday.”

  They clinked their beer glasses and drank.

  ***

  Carter lost his share of friends and colleagues over the years, but he didn’t discuss it, even with Seacrest. Seacrest was aware of this and feared he was losing all sense of proportion in his life. There was no fun in it anymore for him. If Seacrest talked about something unrelated to a case, he smiled and nodded, but she knew he was somewhere else, storing away memories and thoughts into neatly labeled boxes in the back of his mind.

  For several years now, quiet, stuffy Carter had been closing cases at a higher rate than any other cop in Boston, P.D. history. Asked about himself, Carter would only say he measured himself against the highest standards of duty, integrity, honor, and service to his country. And that was true, because even if he lived to be a million years old, he’d never understand people – the non-criminal variety.

  It wasn’t that he never tried. He did. But unless he was in an interrogation room, where he knew all the tricks of the trade, Carter was at a complete loss, socially. Many hearts were broken by his seeming indifference, but not Seacrest’s. She knew as soon as she met him that she’d have to play it cool and maybe even a little insolent to get his attention and keep it. As it turned out, it took a sledge hammer to get his attention, but once she had it, she hung on. Seacrest knew that she had to appear tough and resilient at all times for Carter’s sake, so she learned to appear that way, but she would rather have been able to tell him how she really felt most of the time. It seemed like Carter hardly knew what she was like deep down inside, but that wasn’t all his fault. For all her courage in the field, she was scared to death to admit her wants and needs at home.

  Carter, I can’t breathe until I see you walk through the front door every night. I wish I could say it - just like that - but the day I finally get up the nerve, he’ll just stare at me and wonder if I’ve finally gone mad.

  I think men and women really are each other’s Yin and Yang because we’re so vastly different and unable to understand each other. One of us is always guarding the boundary line while trying not to let the other one know it. I don’t want us to live like that anymore.

  “Carter?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “I’m glad we’re on the
same team.”

  “Me too, honey.” Carter smiled.

  Chapter Four

  Two Days Earlier…

  After two tours of duty in Iraq and an honorable discharge from the armed forces, Shania Deeprose headed home to Alabama for the summer and then straight to the F.B.I. headquarters in New York City. Carter imagined her as Supergirl, but with a mean right hook and an AK-47 in her rucksack.

  Deeprose had a restless spirit. Whatever she’d been looking for, it wasn’t just marriage. Petite and strong, she was still in shape, thirsty for life and optimistic enough to want a big swig out of it. The neighbors were sorry to see her go away again so soon. Deeprose laughed a lot and the sound was good to hear. Today, she left her hair down. It was long and blue-black and framed a face with almond-shaped eyes and naturally terracotta-colored lips.

  Carter wondered how she was adjusting to the Big Apple. It wasn’t an easy place to make your mark. Here, you either outclassed the posers or got the cold shoulder.

  Deeprose interrupted his thoughts as she sailed into his office, all smiles. Pumping his hand as if water might come out of it, she introduced herself with the heaviest, most atrocious accent he had ever heard. Reclaiming his arm, Carter invited her to have a seat.

  “How is New York treating you so far, Agent Deeprose? Don’t let your accent worry you. It’ll fade pretty quickly.”

  Deeprose answered with a straight face. “What accent is that, sir? Y’know, mah pappy used to tell me that the big city would beat the tarnation outta anyone who ventured past Four Corners, but y’all seem pretty friendly to me! Now, ain’t that a kick in the pants?”

  Carter sat back in his chair, unable to think of a thing to say in reply. She looked longingly over at his cappuccino machine, back at him, smiled real big and then…winked.

  Did she just wink at me? Was that a wink?

  “Oh, Ah apologize sir, Ah must have somethin’ in mah eye.”