Smoke and Shadow

by Gamal Hennessy

  Chu tried to maintain his innocent posture as Baker continued. “Smoke, where were you when Maas took his tumble?”

  “I peeled off after I passed him to Ganesh. I ran my SDR and headed back to the OP.”

  “But you got back after Ganesh. Normally the off man gets back before the shadow. What happened?”

  Chu tried not to sound like a liar. “I thought I picked up a tail, so I took a couple extra turns to make sure I was clean.”

  “Did anybody see you?”

  “It was a false alarm. No worries.”

  “No worries.” Baker’s echo had the hollow ring of disbelief, but he dropped the subject and turned to his other witness.

  “Ganesh, you said you didn’t see or hear anything when Maas fell down the steps, right?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Baker. I didn’t see anything.”

  “And because of the fall, Maas is crippled. Right, Stanley?” Chu could see the pieces falling into place for him.

  “It’s too early to tell, but he definitely suffered a spinal injury. There’s a good chance he’ll never walk again. He might even be a quadriplegic.”

  “Never walk again,” Baker’s echo prickled the skin on Chu’s arms. “If he never walks again, then he can never abuse his wife again, right? That’s good news for her, but bad news for us.”

  Baker knew. Chu could see it in his eyes. During their long friendship, they shared a lot of conversations about the War of Chu and all the suffering of his mother. Baker had intimate knowledge of Chu’s skills in ambush and concealment. He counted on Chu to be his invisible weapon. Baker pieced together Chu’s motivation, his opportunity and his ability. He understood what Chu did and why. But would he approve? Could he accept Chu’s decision with so much money and professional reputation riding on this op? Chu decided to speak up, before Baker had to choose between their friendship and his business.

  So he shrugged, trying to make his words sound spontaneous for the benefit of Kean and Privti. “Maybe not. There might be a way for us to catch the same fish with different bait.”

  “Really?” Baker leaned against the plywood dresser and gave Chu a conspiratorial look. “How do you suggest we salvage this snafu, Smoke?”

  “We’re working on the theory Beijing wants Maas’s technology, right? They don’t really want him. His ability or inability to walk doesn’t change their goal.”

  Baker shook his head, but didn’t interrupt. He probably knew where this was going.

  “Maas is crippled, which gives China a new form of leverage. Maas’s medical bills are going to skyrocket. With no job and a wife who doesn’t work, he’s not going to be able to cover them for long. He might try to sue the bar, but that could take years and there’s no guarantee he’ll win. Maas needs money. The Chinese could put themselves in a position to pay his way in exchange for the data.”

  “But how will they make contact with him in his condition?” Privti wanted hope, but he wasn’t ready to buy in yet.

  “Maria is the key” Baker said without taking his eyes off Chu. “She’ll have to deal with insurance agents, doctors, lawyers and any number of people on behalf of her husband. There will be plenty of opportunities for contact and recruitment. All we have to do is keep watching her.”

  Chu nodded, trying not to say too much. Kean chimed in with questions of his own.

  “What if she decides not to take care of him? What if she decides to dump his ass and walk away for what he did to her?”

  Baker shook his head and smiled. “Maria needs money too. If she decides to sell Erich’s work to finance her new life, the end result is the same. We still track the buyer, get video of the illegal transaction and the client uses the intel to blackmail Beijing. Everybody wins.”

  “So does this mean we should continue to monitor the house?” The prospect of keeping his job made Privti’s face light up like a kid at Christmas.

  “I don’t know, Ganesh. I was under the impression you were uncomfortable working this assignment with Mr. Chu…”

  “Mr. Baker, I would appreciate a chance to show what I can do. Mr. Chu and I understand each other. We are on the same team. I’m sure we can turn this situation into a positive result.”

  Baker kept shaking his head. “What about you, Stanley? You willing to stay on the op and switch targets?”

  “Watching Mrs. Maas get recruited is a lot better than watching her get beat up. We’ll need more people to cover all her potential contacts, but I think we should stay on as the core team to help coordinate things.”

  “Right.” Baker turned back to Chu with a smile mixed with pride, relief and a bit of fraternal mischief. “This is your plan, Smoke. Are you willing to stay on and manage it on the ground?”

  Chu shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him either way. “I try to do the right thing. If you need me, I’m here.”

  Baker didn’t bother to hide his amusement. “Are you sure? I figured you’d want to take some time to visit your mother.”

  Chu shrugged again, downplaying the final hint of their shared secret. “I’m sure she’ll understand what I’m doing, even if I never tell her.”

  “We all have our secrets, Mr. Chu.” Baker gave his friend a good slap on his shoulder before he left the room. “Some of us just have more secrets than others.”

  Interlude: Team Building

  Summer 2014

  “Did Chinese intelligence ever make contact with the wife?” Nikki watched Chu and Trent run a brutal cardio circuit. One man would hoist the other over his shoulder like a sack of dirty laundry and then sprint across the beach parallel to the shore line. As he kicked up sand and struggled to run with a full grown man on his back, the passenger engaged in all sorts of torment. Orders barked in harsh military tones followed brisk slaps to the kidneys or elbows to the back of the head. When the runner reached the discarded t-shirt serving as a marker, the men would switch, repeating the exercise. Just watching the two men made Nikki’s thighs ache.

  Rose watched with her, without sharing Nikki’s respect for their exertion. “No. Maria Maas never had any contact from foreign intelligence and the entire op was scrubbed after eight more weeks of surveillance. The client wasn’t happy at all.”

  “We can’t manufacture engagement with the opposition, Ms. Mendoza.” Baker took a seat next to Ria and took her free hand in his own. “We get paid to look, but we can’t find what isn’t there.”

  “Something might have been there if you didn’t have a loose cannon in the operation.” Rose turned away from the beach to face Baker. “If it was my op, I would have made sure Chu never worked another day for the company or anyone else. He let his personal feelings get in the way and ruined an entire operation. I would have turned him over to the police and let him take his chances with an attempted murder charge.”

  “I’d be careful if I were you, sister.” Ria tipped the open neck of her third Corona towards Rose as she spoke, rushing to Baker’s defense without any invitation or warning. “You turn on a guy like Chu and you might find yourself falling down a flight of dark steps.

  Rose sucked her teeth and pulled away from the table in a pathetic attempt at defiance. “I’m not afraid of him.”

  Ria laughed and took a sip. “That’s a big part of your problem.”

  Before Rose and Ria could escalate the argument, Nikki directed an unrelated question to Baker. “I haven’t met Privti or Kean. Do they still work for RSVP?”

  Rose cut in before Baker could respond. “Sure. Those two headed up the surveillance detail on Ria before her recruitment.”

  “I know all about his little surveillance detail.” Ria pulled her hand away from Baker with a brisk tug, as if she just remembered a past argument. “I still don’t understand why my business deserved so much attention.”

  “A lot of resources went into bringing you in, Ria. A lot of people had to fall in line.”

  Something in Rose’s barb made the statement personal, but Baker started his damage control before Nikki could fi
gure out what she meant. “You’re unique, Ms. Marlen. Once I realized how well you’d fit in the team, I wanted to make sure we were in the right position to offer each other a little mutual exploitation.”

  “Is everything you do part of your little plan? Is this just one big op for you?”

  Nikki jumped in before the lover’s spat exploded into an argument or even violence. “Warren, how do Smoke and Shadow fit into the team? They’re not really experts on collecting intelligence or recruiting sources.”

  Ria flashed Nikki a ‘don’t try to change the fucking subject’ look, but Baker didn’t pounce on the opportunity. He sat back, giving Rose a patient and dismissive glance. Only then did he address Nikki’s question.

  “There are times when intelligence collecting is a down and dirty job that requires an operator’s skill set. You and Ria are perfect for collecting information in an urban environment, but sometimes I need boots on the ground in a place where your skill set isn’t optimized.”

  “Like the little favor you offered when you tried to recruit me?” Ria poked Baker’s arm with the mouth of her bottle. “I’ve been waiting to hear this story.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. You needed something. I was in a position to provide results.”

  “You weren’t in a position to do shit. But your boys were. Did you send them after the snakeheads?”

  “What happened with the snakeheads?” Nikki preferred another story to more fighting.

  Baker took another sip of whiskey and offered a sly smile as he spoke. “A situation came to my attention and I felt it was my duty as a citizen to take action…”

  Book Four: A Small Favor

  Chapter One: All You Have to Do...

  Spring 2013

  Baker’s pitch felt wrong before Chu even heard it.

  The first nervous quiver in his stomach came from the neighborhood Baker selected for the meeting. Chu took the 7 train to the last stop and roamed in a random appearing pattern before making his way to the non-descript apartment building on Downing Street. He blended in with the teeming crowds of Chinese and Koreans of Flushing’s bustling midday streets. He even stopped to buy some fruit from one of the hundreds of open air stalls packed onto the sidewalks.

  The purchase gave him a chance to stop and check for surveillance behind him. The red plastic grocery bag gave him an extra piece of camouflage, since most shoppers in Chinatown had at least one of the little bags in their hand. Besides, Chu loved the idea of going back home with his pomegranates and enjoying the meticulous task of extracting the juicy red seeds.

  Maybe the inherent promise of pleasure created a warning in Chu’s mind. Baker knew how much Chu enjoyed Chinatown. He probably anticipated the positive mood this SDR could create. The choice of a beneficial meeting location could have been a coincidence, but Warren Baker didn’t deal in coincidences. Was he trying to lower Chu’s guard or was professional awareness turning into paranoia?

  Chu found more clues at the meeting location. He avoided the front door as Baker instructed, and walked to the service entrance around the corner instead. The heavy steel door sat open. Baker had wedged a small piece of wood in the door frame to prevent it from locking. Shadows draped the inner hallway, but Chu didn’t see any threats beyond the threshold. Chu knew who propped open the door when he looked at the piece of wood.

  The door stop itself was ordinary enough, but the markings on the side stood out like a beacon. A few years ago, Baker, Chu, Carpenter and Trent worked for Trident Security in Iraq under the team designation Nightwatch. They used a special symbol to mark their dead drops in the field, four dots arranged in a diamond formation. Baker hadn’t used the symbol since he lost his leg in Karbala and Nightwatch fell apart. Chu walked into the basement feeling more uncertainty than nostalgia.

  The last warning came when Chu got closer to the laundry room where the meeting was supposed to take place. He kept his head low as he passed under the security camera, counting on his all too common Giants sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers and Yankees cap to discourage any attempts to identify him later. A crude sign taped to the wall said “Laundry Closed for Maintenance”. Chu ignored the sign and focused on the laughter echoing off the thick concrete walls.

  He recognized the voices of the two men in the room ahead. Chu hunted and killed terrorists with them. They shared blood, sweat and large quantities of alcohol in dark alleys and dusty battlefields. The chaos of combat, kidnappings and war taught them things about each other no one else could understand. So why did this meeting feel so wrong? Chu didn’t have an answer to his question, so he entered the laundry room with his arms open and a smile on his face.

  “What’s up bitches?”

  “Did this guy really stop to buy fruit on his way over here?” Trent stepped up to Chu and the two men fell into an embrace reserved for family and fierce friends. Chu took a moment to enjoy the reunion, but he still shot a quick glance over at Baker to try and figure out what was on his mind.

  “You know,” Baker said stealing a peak at his phone while the two men parted “if you guys really missed each other so much, you could have met up. You don’t need me to play match maker.”

  Chu answered Baker’s question by talking to Trent. “I thought you were still recovering from your shit show uptown. How are you feeling?”

  “Better than the last time you saw me.”

  “The last time I saw you, your leg was broken and you were bleeding all over my car.”

  “So this is an improvement, right?”

  Chu laughed. “Not much. You’re still pretty fucking ugly.”

  The collective chuckle from Chu’s jibe hadn’t died away before he turned to Baker and got down to business. “You didn’t tell me you were getting the band back together. Is Silence gonna join us too?”

  “No. I’ve got him working on another assignment down in Miami. I need you two to help me with something else.”=

  “How much are you paying?” Chu tried to sound like he was joking, even though he wasn’t.

  “So predictable…” Baker sighed as he leaned back against the washing machines to take pressure off his leg. “I’ll cover your per diem, expenses, equipment and training. You don’t have to worry about any of that.”

  “Training? Since when do we need training?” Trent’s question echoed the one forming in Chu’s head and probably showed on his face.

  “I know you boys think you’re hot shit, but you haven’t done tactical maneuvers together in more than a year. You’re gonna need to shake the rust off for this one.”

  “What’s the job?” Chu heard the doubt in his own voice. The rumblings in his stomach on the way here began again with a more insistent rhythm.

  Baker shrugged his shoulders to make his words feel trivial. “It’s trash removal. We’ve got a two week window for prep and execution.”

  “You’ve got a roster full of operators at RSVP. Why can’t you send one of your teams to do it?”

  “This isn’t an official op. We can’t have it on the books even as a discretionary line item.”

  Chu knew the answer before he asked the question, but he wanted all the cards out on the table. “Who’s the target?”

  “It’s a group of snakeheads in a Chinatown tenement. There running a brothel full of sex slaves with sixteen to twenty five prisoners in total aged between twelve and twenty. All lesser attempts at removing the opposition and safely extracting the women trapped inside have failed. I need the building infiltrated, the opposition removed and extraction from the site with a minimum amount of public disturbance.”