I, Weapon

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Let Fox take care of this,” the wife pleaded.

  “You heard the yell. It’s Janice. I have to check.”

  The bedroom door opened and Justice Blake cautiously stepped out, proceeding with the shotgun. Bannon snatched the barrel and ripped the shotgun out of Blake’s grip, and he pointed the SIG at the old man’s face.

  Blake’s eyes widened with fright. He had leathery skin and bags under his eyes. “Don’t—”

  Bannon shoved the Justice into the bedroom, making the old man stumble and almost trip and fall.

  Somehow, he managed to stay upright.

  His wife screamed from where she sat up in bed.

  “Shut up!” Bannon told her.

  At the command in his voice she whimpered into silence.

  “Get on your belly,” he told Blake.

  “Do you know who I am?” the Justice asked.

  Bannon knew, but he wondered now more than ever about his memories. The Los Zetas tattoo with the question mark told him he couldn’t trust them. Therefore, instead of killing Blake here and now, Bannon went off script, clicked the hammer and shoved the silencer against the side of Blake’s nose.

  “Please, don’t shoot,” Blake said, with fear. He climbed down onto his belly.

  “If you get out of your bed,” Bannon told the wife, “I’ll kill him and then you.”

  She began to weep.

  Setting the shotgun and SIG on the carpet, Bannon duct-taped the Justice’s wrists behind his back and then he taped his ankles together.

  “Your turn,” Bannon told the wide-eyed, teary wife.

  “What do you want from us?” she whispered.

  “Shut up and you might live through the night.”

  She obeyed and Bannon soon bound her. He also taped around her mouth several times, effectively gagging her.

  Justice Blake had turned his head to watch. The old man now asked, “What happened to Fox?”

  Bannon retrieved the shotgun. “Do you remember Senator Toland?”

  “Who?”

  Bannon looked around and spied a chair. He dragged it near and sat down.

  “Do you mind if I sit up?” Blake asked. “This is very uncomfortable.”

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “To rob us, I’d presume. I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  “Think back,” Bannon said, as he slid to the edge of the chair. “Think back fifteen maybe sixteen years ago. Where did you work then?”

  Blake frowned, and from on his belly, he cocked his head. “I was in San Francisco then on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. What does that have to do with you?”

  “No. You were a judge in Sacramento, presiding over my trial.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was never a judge in Sacramento.”

  Bannon slid off the chair and onto his knees before Blake. He took a firm grip of the old man’s hair and lifted the man’s head. “You railroaded me, accepting a bribe from Senator Toland. You sent me to prison, even after telling me you understood what I had done. You told me you would have done the same thing if you had been in my position.”

  Blake stared at him blankly and with growing fear.

  Bannon released his hold, twisted around and picked up the shotgun. “Look at this. You were going to do the same thing tonight and protect your family. I protected my wife from two animal rapists and you sent me to prison for life because of it.”

  “I’ve never seen you before,” the old man whispered. “Believe me. I’d remember someone like you.”

  Bannon re-cocked the SIG, aiming it at Blake’s forehead.

  From on the bed where she lay on her belly, the Justice’s wife moaned.

  “What do you think I did to you?” Blake asked. “Please, tell me.”

  Bannon put pressure on the trigger. The liar didn’t deserve to live. But Bannon hesitated. He knew Blake wasn’t the only liar in this game. He moistened his lips and used the wrist of his gun-hand to wipe his sweaty forehead. He felt feverish and he kept seeing the Justice pushing his lawn mower back and forth across the yard in his mind’s eye. Blake’s daughter had even brought out lemonade afterward for everyone to drink.

  “You must have me confused with someone else,” Blake said.

  Bannon laughed, and even to him, it sounded strained.

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” Blake said. “If you’re going to kill me, the least you can do is tell me why.”

  Bannon squinted at the old buzzard. Blake met his stare and held it.

  “Very well,” Bannon said, and he began to talk. It took less than ten minutes to outline the horrible injustice and the senator’s hit man years later.

  “But this is preposterous,” Blake said. “First, I have never accepted a bribe in my life. Everyone knows that. They call me the second Honest Abe.”

  Bannon sneered.

  “Second,” Blake said, “there never was a Senator Toland from California.”

  “I didn’t say it was a Californian senator.”

  “I’ll concede that. But it’s ridiculous any U.S. senator would hire a hit man to kill your daughter and wife. Not only is it illegal, it’s political suicide. No, I must conclude—”

  “Have you looked at any U.S. senators lately? Too many of them are treasonous snakes and thoroughgoing thieves and con men.”

  Blake seemed to absorb that. “The Senate, the House and even the office of the Presidency have lost popularity and respect in recent years. I’ll grant you that. People view lawyers and IRS agents with higher regard than congressmen. But I still don’t believe—”

  Bannon smashed the silencer into the Justice’s mouth, chipping teeth. “You’re a liar. It’s time to end this farce.”

  The duct-taped woman on the bed made pleading noises and tears brimmed in her eyes.

  Bannon dropped his gaze, unable to look at her. Instead, he looked into the Justice’s pain-filled eyes. He saw something there. It was realization on the Justice’s part. Intrigued and wanting—needing—the satisfaction of the Justice realizing he was getting real justice, Bannon withdrew his gun from the man’s bleeding lips.

  “You’re one of them,” the Justice said in disbelief. “I should have seen it right away. Listen. There is a case before the Supreme Court concerning Homeland Security. It’s about one of their least known agencies: the Anti-Terror Squad. I’m convincing other Justices to put severe limits on their black ops here in America and aboard. I’ve heard rumors about mind control, and seeing you and listening to your absurd story, I realize now the rumors must be true.”

  “Nice try,” Bannon said.

  “I can prove to you I’m telling the truth.”

  “How?”

  “No Supreme Court Justice has served as a regular judge for many, many decades. Thus, logically, it’s impossible that I was a Sacramento judge. That means I never presided over your case, if you ever had one.”

  “Explain that.”

  “The court system has several tiers, those for regular people and those for the rich. Do rich kids go to public schools? No. Children of the rich also enter on a higher rung, never at the entry-level jobs. Look at the biographies of the Supreme Court Justices. They don’t include time as regular judges. I could not have been the Sacramento judge then. Can’t you see that?”

  “No.”

  “But you do,” Justice Blake said. “I see it on your face. Yes, of course. If the rumors are true, they’ve submerged your personality and memories. Over it, they’ve placed what they want you to think. In this instance, it is the idea that I put you in prison. Not only did I not preside over your case, but I doubt now that you ever had a case and I doubt that you’ve even been in prison.”

  Bannon licked his lips. Could the Justice be right?

  “Because of the brief before us, I’ve studied ATS and their leading personalities. Henry Griffith runs the agency. He used to work for the NSA. The man lacked scruples and used much of the latest eavesdropping equipment on Americ
an citizens. Eventually he went too far and was involved in the death of several anti-government agitators. The NSA quietly let him go. The head of Homeland Security took Griffith under his wing. Now—”

  “I’ve listened to you long enough,” Bannon said.

  “Wait! Let me ask you one last thing. Do you have any recurring memories that don’t match your present thoughts?”

  Bannon looked away.

  “You’re prepared to murder me,” Blake said, his voice hardening. “The least you could do—”

  “Why do you mow your own lawn?” Bannon asked, turning to watch the man’s eyes.

  “Pardon?”

  “I saw you mowing your lawn earlier.”

  “Ah! Yes, I see. What about my mowing troubles you?”

  “I used to mow lawns.”

  “When?”

  “It must have been as a kid,” Bannon said.

  “You mean you don’t remember? Is that what you’re saying? Don’t you find that strange? You should easily be able to remember when you used to mow lawns.”

  Bannon studied the earnest Justice.

  “Think about that carefully. Probe deeply, if you can and ask yourself, ‘When did I mow lawns?’ And think of this, too. If you can tell me when you mowed, it will prove that I’m wrong about this.”

  Bannon thought about his tattoos, about the crusted steel box. Could he have been wrong about Parker trying to erase this memory? Had she instead been trying to insert them?

  “You have nothing to lose,” Blake was saying. “But you have everything to gain if I’m right. I’m not going anywhere and I presume you’ve incapacitated my bodyguard.”

  Bannon lurched to his feet. He remembered riding a lawn mower. He recalled Turlock Lake. There had been a woman…she’d put a needle into his arm. Needles…Dr. Parker…white masked people hovering over him…Bannon could see himself in his mind’s eye climbing up a wall with suction cups on his palms and knees. How could he have climbed such a wall if he’d been in prison for years?

  Bannon walked out of the bedroom holding the SIG by his thigh. He descended the stairs, stopped in the living room and looked up the stairs. He had attacked Blake in his vacation home. The Justice would free himself and possibly come after him. The bodyguard outside—

  He needed a quiet place in order to shuffle through his memories like a dealer shuffling a deck.

  Bannon opened a door. It was dark and quiet outside, devoid of people. He paused as he felt something out of place. He glanced into the house. No. He didn’t feel any scrutiny from within. Should he run back up and get the Justice’s shotgun? He shook his head and peered outside.

  Is a coyote watching me? He didn’t like this and wondered if ATS had a way of tracking him.

  -22-

  “He’s just standing there,” Susan said, as she studied the computer screen.

  As the Justice’s side door opened onscreen, Karl stood straighter in the surveillance room in the house up the hill. His heart rate quickened. They had slain a Supreme Court Justice of the United States of America. Now it was time to tie up the loose end before the press had a chance to probe.

  “Should I proceed?” Susan asked.

  “Not yet,” Karl said. “We need copy of Bannon leaving the house and we need images of his face.”

  Susan nodded as her fingers hovered over the keypad. “He’s coming out,” she said.

  Karl watched Bannon step out of the house. The killer seemed cautious.

  “He looks different,” Susan said.

  “Explain,” Karl said.

  She brought up the previous still shot. It showed a concentrated killer, not this thoughtful person slowly edging away from the house.

  Karl studied the man on the screen and a premonition of danger grew. The way Bannon held the gun beside his leg, the slope of the shoulders—it wasn’t how Dr. Parker said it should go after the hit.

  “We have enough video,” he said. “Do it.”

  Susan began to type with a secretary’s speed, the clacking sounds ominous in the otherwise quiet room.

  ***

  In his mind’s eye, it felt to Bannon as if he walked down an ancient corridor in a dilapidated mansion. There were many doors in the corridor. In each door was a porthole. The portholes were dirty, nearly impossible to look through. He’d already tried to look several times. In one porthole, Bannon saw himself on a riding lawn mower. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, listened to earplugs and had a goofy smile on his face. In another porthole, a person with a white mask shoved a needle into his arm. The third showed him hiking through a jungle. He wore a heavy pack and was hell-bent on killing Juan Ramirez, the chief of the Los Zetas Drug Cartel.

  Before Bannon could proceed down the mental corridor, the feeling of being watched intensified. He had taken five slow steps out of the house. Now his neck prickled and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Bannon broke into a sprint. He flat-out ran, pumping his fists, covering ground fast and gaining speed as his feet thudded on sod. Air rushed down his throat in heaving gasps and—

  An explosion rent the night. One moment silence reigned around him as Bannon heard his labored breathing. The next an ear-shattering blast turned the night bright with agonizing brilliance.

  Everything slowed down for Bannon. He turned his head. The two-story house behind him exploded with incandescent fury. The flash grew as fire climbed into the night sky. Lumber, furniture, windows and surely human flesh and bones exploded outward in the titanic blast that obliterated the Justice’s vacation home.

  Bannon saw it like a snapshot. He closed his eyes, faced forward again and a violent force picked him off the grass and flung him like a doll. Sounds hammered at his eardrums as he kept tumbling through the air, expelled by the mighty killing blast.

  I didn’t expect this.

  It was a single thought—his only one—even as he was precisely aware of what occurred around him. As he flew his back hit pine branches. He heard whipping sounds. Pine needles scratched his neck and his triceps. He flew past a tree trunk. He saw a heavy branch as he sailed farther, hitting more branches but missing trunks that would have snapped his spine. He broke past trees, hit the ground, bounced, rolled in the air, hit again on his side and crashed onto a pile of compost: a pile of leaves and needles many years old.

  Bannon lay stunned. Then the debris—lumber, furniture, glass, bone, bits of rug—smashed against the trees in a rain of millions of tiny projectiles. Bannon rolled over and covered his head. A second later, he curled into a fetal ball and waited. The wait seemed to last forever. Then splintered, explosion-destroyed objects rained around him. Heat washed over him. More sounds followed, and they deafened his world.

  What’s going on?

  As the thought ended, so did the raining debris. Bannon lay on the compost heap, holding his body in pain and surprise. He unfolded from his protective curl. Looking up he spied shredded trees. Then he saw the burning remnants of what seconds before had been the Justice’s house. The flames crackled with intensity and there were popping sounds.

  Someone used C-4 on the house.

  That meant…that meant someone else wanted Justice Blake dead. The person or persons had also waited until he’d exited the house. That would imply Blake had been right and ATS was behind this.

  Bannon shifted up to his knees. His left shoulder and arm was sore. He climbed to his feet, discovering that he could stand. But could he walk? He dropped to his knees and vomited, gasped for air and vomited again. Sweat bathed his face. He wiped his eyes.

  He noticed something else. The fire illuminated the trees higher up the hill. A man cradling an assault rifle with a long sound suppressor moved between two cypresses. The man worked down the hill and stepped behind a tree, hiding himself from view.

  Bannon blinked, wiped his eyes again and frowned as he tried to get his mind working.

  The cleaners are coming to kill you.

  Bannon dropped to his knees and began searching, feeling around. He raised his h
ead, trying to figure out what his flight path had been from the house. He saw the SIG and scrambled to it, picking it up. He stared in the direction he’d seen the man with the assault rifle climbing down the hill. The man was coming to kill him.

  You have to kill him first.

  ***

  “Well?” Karl asked.

  He stood in the surveillance room with Susan at the computer screen. Through the nearest window, they had seen the explosion. It had lit up the room. Now the brilliance had died down, although flames down there threw illumination against the wall. The explosion would bring people. Karl estimated ten minutes before the first curious onlookers would appear. It would probably be fifteen or twenty minutes on the outside before any police or fire trucks pulled up.

  “Tell me his condition,” Karl demanded.

  Susan twisted around. There was a hollow look to her face, with staring eyes. “According to the locator he hasn’t moved since landing.”

  Karl studied her. She was smarter than Max and the other commandos. She felt the strain. In any other circumstance, Karl would have let a grim smile touch his lips. He didn’t look like a thinker. He looked like a wrestler, a thug with a hardened bulge of fat on the back collar of his suit. But he was the case officer. He ran the team. He could think and he realized that this was the hit of his life. If it went flawlessly, he would get a promotion to the highest level. In time, he might become the Controller. He knew what to do with such a position. He knew the power of security combined with the secret police ability to kill whomever he wanted.

  “Is he alive?” Karl asked.

  “He has to be dead. He was right next to the explosion.”

  “You saw him. He was running.”

  “I saw it,” Susan said, “and I’d still like to know why he ran? Did someone tip him off?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “How then?” Susan asked. “What gave it away?”

  “There’s a reason Bannon is the best we have. You just saw the evidence of it.”

  “He was the best.”

  “Has he moved?” Max asked, his voice crackling over the radio.

  “Negative,” Susan said into a throat microphone. “He’s dead.”