Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  She knocked on the door. She heard footsteps rapidly padding toward the door, then the chain lock rattling as it was unhooked. The door swung open, and he stood there in his corduroy pants and one of the half-dozen tattered T-shirts he owned, all of which referenced some science-fiction movie or television show.

  “Hey, there,” she cooed, shooting a hip like a runway model. Years of training had left her without a trace of an accent. “Happy to see me?”

  Her sundress-in the light peach color he liked so much-was clingy in all the right places and billowy in the others, the perfect balance of chasteness and spice. Most men, even if they didn’t realize it, wanted their women to be ladies in daily life and whores in the bedroom.

  His hungry eyes finished their scan of her legs and breasts, and then came to rest on her face. “Uh, yeah… God, yeah,” he mumbled. “Come on, get in here.”

  They made love twice over the next two hours, the first time lasting only a few minutes, the second time ten minutes, and only that long because she’d held him off. Muscles of a different sort, she thought. But no less powerful. When they were done he lay on his back, panting, his chest and face slick with sweat. She rolled off and snuggled into his shoulder, exhaling heavily.

  “Wow,” she murmured. “That was… Wow…”

  “Yeah, it was,” he replied.

  Steve wasn’t a bad-looking man, with curly reddish-blond hair and light blue eyes, but he was too skinny for her tastes, and his beard made her face and thighs itchy. He was clean, though, and he didn’t smoke, and his teeth were straight, so all in all she knew it could be worse.

  As for his lovemaking skills… They were almost nonexistent. He was an overly considerate lover and too gentle by far, always worried he was doing something wrong or should be doing something different. She did her best to reassure him, saying all the right things and making all the right noises at all the right moments, but she suspected in the back of his head he was worried about losing her-not that he “had” her, really.

  It was the quintessential beauty-and-the-beast syndrome. He wasn’t going to lose her, of course, at least not until she’d gotten the answer her employers needed. Allison felt a momentary pang of guilt, imagining how he would react when she disappeared. She was fairly certain he’d fallen in love with her, which was the point, after all, but he was so… harmless it was hard not to occasionally feel sorry for him. Hard but not impossible. She pushed the thought from her mind.

  “So how’s work?” he asked.

  “It’s fine, the same old thing: making the rounds, giving my pitch, handing out my phone numbers, and showing the doctors a little cleavage…”

  “Hey!”

  “Relax, I’m kidding. A lot of the doctors are worried about the recalls.”

  “On TV, the pain meds?”

  “Those are the ones. We’re getting a lot of pressure from the manufacturer to keep pushing them.”

  As far as he knew, she was a pharmaceutical saleswoman based in Reno. They “met” at a Barnes & Noble, where, at the in-house Starbucks, she’d found herself a nickel short in paying for her Caffè Mocha. Behind her in line, Steve had nervously offered to cover the difference. Armed with his dossier-or what little of his dossier they felt she needed to have-and well aware of his habits, the meeting had been easy to arrange and easier still to exploit when she’d expressed an interest in a book he was reading, something about mechanical engineering that she actually cared nothing about. He hadn’t noticed, so thrilled to have a pretty girl paying attention to him.

  “So all that engineering stuff,” she said. “I don’t know how you do it. I tried to read one of those books you gave me, but it went right over my head.”

  “Well, you’re plenty smart, that’s for sure, but it’s pretty dry stuff. Don’t forget, I went to four years of college for it, and even then I didn’t really learn anything practical until I got on the job. MIT taught me a lot, but nothing compared to what I’ve learned since then.”

  “Like what?”

  “Ah, you know, just stuff.”

  “Such as?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Okay, okay, I get the point, Mr. Important Top-Secret Guy.”

  “It’s not that, Ali,” he replied in a slightly whiny tone. “It’s just that they make you sign all this paperwork-confidentiality agreements and all that.”

  “Wow, you must be important.”

  He shook his head. “Nah. You know how the government is… paranoid to the end. Hell, I’m a little surprised they haven’t polygraphed us, but who knows?”

  “So what is it, then? Weapons and bombs and stuff like that? Wait a second… Are you a rocket scientist?”

  He chuckled. “No, not a rocket scientist. Mechanical engineer-average, run-of-the mill engineer.”

  “A spy?” She propped herself up on an elbow, letting the sheet fall away to reveal a pale breast. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re a spy.”

  “No, not a spy, either. I mean, come on, look at me. I’m a nerd.”

  “The perfect cover.”

  “Boy, you’ve got some imagination there, I’ll give you that.”

  “You’re dodging the question. That’s a giveaway-a telltale spy move.”

  “Nope. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Then what? Tell me…”

  “I work for the DOE-Department of Energy.”

  “Like nuclear energy and all that.”

  “Right.”

  The truth was she knew exactly what he did for a living, where he worked, and what went on there. What she was looking for-what they were looking for-was much more specific. They were confident he had the information, perhaps already in his head, and if not, he certainly had access to it. She absently wondered why they had chosen to use her rather than to simply snatch him off the street and extract the information through blunt force. She suspected the answer had as much to do with where he worked as it did the unreliability of torture. If Steve disappeared or turned up dead under even remotely suspicious circumstances, there would be an investigation by not only the local police but the FBI as well, and that kind of scrutiny was something her employer was probably quite anxious to avoid. Still, the fact that they hadn’t chosen the more direct method told her something: The information they needed was both critical and extraordinary. Steve was perhaps their only viable source of the information, which meant it was either highly protected elsewhere or his grasp of it was singular.

  Not that it mattered. She would do the job, take the money, and then… well, who knew?

  Her fee was considerable, enough perhaps to give her a head start on a new life somewhere else, doing something else for a living. Something ordinary, like being a librarian or a book-keeper. She smiled at the thought. Ordinary might be nice. She would have to be very careful, though, with these people. However they were planning to use this information, it was clearly of deadly importance. Important enough to kill over, she suspected.

  Back to work…

  She lazily traced her fingernails over his chest. “You’re not, like, in danger or anything, are you? I mean, from cancer or anything?”

  “Well, no,” he said, “not really. I guess there’s some risk, but they’ve got protocols and rules and regulations-enough that you’d have to really screw up to get hurt.”

  “So it’s never happened-to anyone?”

  “Sure, but usually it’s dumb stuff, like some guy getting his foot run over by a forklift or choking on nachos in the cafeteria. We’ve had a couple close calls in… in other places, but that was usually because somebody tried to cut a corner, and even when that happens, there’re backup systems and procedures. Believe me, babe, I’m pretty safe.”

  “Good; I’m glad. I hate to think of you hurt or sick.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Ali. I’m very careful.”

  We’ll see, she thought.

  13

  JACK JUNIOR PRESSED HIMSELF flat against the wall and slid forward along it, feeling the
splinters in the rough plank boards catch on his shirt. He reached the corner and stopped, weapon held in the Weaver stance doublehanded grip, barrel pointed downward. Not like Hollywood or cop TV shows, he thought, where they carried the gun pointed barrel-up beside their faces. Sure, it looked cool-nothing framed a hero’s lantern jaw and steely blue eyes like a chunky Glock-but this wasn’t about cool, this was about staying alive and putting down the bad guys. Growing up in the White House surrounded by Secret Service pros who knew guns better than they knew their own kids certainly had its advantages, didn’t it?

  The problem with the Hollywood model of gun handling was twofold: site picture and ambush. Real-world combat hand-gunning was about shooting straight and true under pressure, and that, in turn, was all about mind-set and site picture. The former was about conditioning; the latter, mechanics. It was a lot easier and a lot more effective to bring a weapon up, get a good site picture of the target, and snap off a shot than it was doing it in the reverse. The other factor-the ambush-was all about what happens when you turn a corner to find yourself face-to-face with a bad guy. Do you want your gun up, by your face, or do you want it down where you might, just might, have a chance to snap off a shot into the guy’s legs before he tackles you and the situation devolves into a no-holds-barred wrestling match? That didn’t happen very often, of course, but as far as Jack was concerned, and as far as real shooters were concerned, it was much better to be wrestling a bad guy who had a 9-millimeter slug or two in his leg than not.

  Theory, Jack, he reminded himself, returning to the here and now. Theories are for the classroom, not the real world.

  Where the hell was Dominic? They’d separated at the front door, Dominic moving right to take the house’s back rooms-the potentially more “heavy” rooms-Jack to the left, heading for the more open kitchen and living room. Don’t worry about Dominic, worry about you. His cousin was FBI-at least officially-so he needed no lessons on this stuff.

  Jack changed the gun to his left hand, dried his palm on his pants leg, then changed it back again. He took a breath, took a short step back, then peeked his head around the corner. Kitchen. Refrigerator to the right; avocado-green counter, stainless-steel sink, and desktop microwave to the left; dining table and chairs down a ways, past the end of the counter, beside the back door.

  Jack scanned for movement but saw nothing, so he stepped out, gun raised to near shoulder height, eyes scanning, gun barrel following, then crept into the kitchen. Ahead and to the right was an archway, this one leading to the living room, he assumed, picturing the layout in his head. Dominic should be coming through the other room on the right to link up with him-

  “Jack, rear bedroom window!” Dominic shouted from somewhere deeper inside the house. “Got a runner! Out the side window! White male, red jacket, armed… I’m on him!”

  Jack resisted the impulse to charge ahead, instead moving slow and steady, clearing the remainder of the kitchen, then peeking around the corner into the living room. Clear. He stepped to the patio door, body aligned to the left of the doorjamb and hopefully behind the wooden 2×4 studs under the drywall that would, in theory, stop or slow down any bullets meant for him, then ducked down to peer out the porthole-style window into the alley beyond. To his right he saw a figure moving down the alley: blue windbreaker, yellow letters. Dominic’s FBI windbreaker. Jack opened the door, looked again, then pushed open the screen door. Directly across from him was a darkened doorway in the brick wall; to his left a green Dumpster. He moved that way, gun up, tracking for targets. He saw a shadow moving in the doorway and pivoted in time to see a man-shaped silhouette appear on the threshold.

  “Freeze! Don’t move, don’t move!” he shouted, but the figure kept moving, left arm coming into the light, hand holding a revolver. “Drop it!” Jack shouted again, gave him another beat, then fired twice, both shots striking center mass. The figure fell back into the doorway. Jack turned again, back toward the Dumpster, moving until he could see around its corner, looking for-

  And then something slammed into his back, between the shoulder blades, and he staggered forward. He felt the blood rush to his head and thought, Ah, shit, goddamn it… He bounced against the Dumpster, left shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, and tried to pivot on his heel toward the source of the gunfire… He felt another round slam into his side, just below his armpit, and knew it was too late.

  “Hold!” a voice shouted over a bullhorn, followed by three rapid whistle blasts that echoed down the alley. “Cease exercise, cease exercise!”

  “Ah, man…” Jack muttered, then leaned back against the Dumpster and exhaled heavily.

  The man who’d just shot him-Special Agent Walt Brandeis-stepped out of the doorway and shook his head sadly. “My God. To die like that, son, with a green paint splatter in the middle of your back…” Jack could see the half-smile playing across Brandeis’s lips as he looked Jack up and down, then clicked his tongue. “It’s just a plain shame, that’s what it is.”

  Down the alley, Dominic came jogging around the corner and stopped in his tracks, then said, “Again?”

  Here’s the problem, Jack: You were-”

  “Hurrying, I know.”

  “No, not this time. It’s more than that. Hurrying wasn’t your real problem-it was part of it but not really what got you killed. Care to take a guess?”

  Jack Junior thought it over a moment. “I assumed.”

  “Damn right you assumed. You assumed the target you saw in that door was the only one in there. You assumed you’d put him down, then stopped worrying about it. It’s what I call Ambush Relief Syndrome. You won’t find it in the textbooks, but it goes like this: You survived an ambush, a real near thing, and you feel like you’re golden. In your head you subconsciously relabeled that door and the room inside from ‘uncleared’ to ‘cleared.’ Now, if this was real life and there had been two of them in there, your average dumb criminal probably would’ve opened up on you the moment his partner did, but there are always exceptions out there-like that rare creature, a smart bad guy-and exceptions get you killed.”

  “You’re right,” Jack muttered, taking a sip of Diet Coke. “Damn.”

  Along with Brian, who’d sat out the last exercise, he and Dominic had regrouped in the break room after being debriefed by Brandeis, who hadn’t pulled any punches, former President’s son or not. He’d told Jack basically the same thing Dominic was saying, only in a more entertaining fashion. Brandeis, a native Mississippian, had an aw-shucks, Will Rogers way about him that took some sting out of the criticism. Some, but not all of it. What’d you think, Jack, that you’d come here and walk out an expert?

  Like much of the FBI’s Quantico urban tactical training facility known affectionately as Hogan’s Alley, the break room was a Spartan affair, with plywood walls and floors, and Formica tables that looked like they’d been beaten with hammers. The course itself was anything but slapdash, though, right down to its bank, post office, barbershop, and pool hall. And dark doorways, Jack thought. That sure as hell felt real, as had the paint-ball pellet he’d caught between the shoulder blades. It still itched, and he suspected he’d see a good-sized welt later in the shower. But pellet or not, dead was dead. He suspected they’d used paintballs for his benefit. Depending on the scenario being run and the agents running it, Hogan’s Alley could be a lot louder and a lot hairier. Jack had even heard rumors that the HRT-the Hostage Rescue Team-sometimes went live fire. But then again, those guys were the best of the best.

  “What about you? You don’t pile on?” Jack asked Brian, who sat slumped in his chair, rocking on two legs. “Might as well get the full lecture.”

  Brian shook his head and smiled, nodding at his brother. “His turf, cuz, not mine. You come out to Twenty-nine Palms and we’ll talk.” The Marines had their own frighteningly realistic urban combat training center called MOUT-Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain. “Till then, I’ll keep my mouth shut, thank you very much.”

  Dominic rapped a knuc
kle on the table before Jack. “Cuz, goddamn it, you asked us to bring you here, right?”

  The steel in Dominic’s voice was unmistakable, and Jack was momentarily taken aback. What is going on? he wondered. “Right.”

  “You wanted to feel what it’s really like, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then stop acting like a little boy who got caught cheating on the spelling bee. This ain’t about lectures. Nobody gives a shit who you are, or whether you made some rookie mistake your third time out. Hell, the first ten times I ran this course I caught a bullet. That doorway you missed? They almost named that damned thing after me, the number of shots I took there.”

  Jack believed him. Hogan’s had been training FBI agents for twenty-plus years, and the only ones who shot it perfectly were the ones who’d run it so much they saw it in their dreams. That was the way of everything, Jack knew. Practice makes perfect was not a cliché but in fact an axiom, especially in the military and in law enforcement. Practice cut new grooves into your mental wiring while your body developed muscle memory-performing the same action over and over until muscle and synapse worked in unison and thinking was erased from the equation. How long does that kind of thing take? he wondered.

  “Come on…” Jack said.

  “Nope. Ask Brandeis. He’ll be happy to tell you. I took plenty of his bullets. Shit, the first two times I walked right by that door and got killed for it. Look, I’m not all that keen on telling you this, but the truth is you did damned good your first time out. Scary good. Hell, who would’ve figured it… My brainiac cousin a gen-u-ine gunslinger.”

  “Now you’re humoring me.”

  “No, I’m not. Really, man. Jump in, Brian. Tell him.”

  “He’s right, Jack. You’re really rough around the edges-hell, you crossed Dom twice in the Laundromat-”