by J. B. Turner
He opened the rear passenger door.
Time seemed to have slowed down.
Inside, cowering on the floor, was Kathleen Burke, hands trying to shield her face.
“Please! Please! I have a son!”
Pearce aimed the gun at Burke’s head and smiled. “Hunter says hi.” He fired two shots to the back of her head, blood and brain splattering across the leather seats and the windows.
He turned and walked away, warm blood dripping off his face.
TWENTY-NINE
Hunter Cain was dripping in sweat as he pummeled a punching bag in the basement gym of the oceanfront property on Fisher Island, Miami. Upstairs, behind closed drapes, were his two comrades, willing to spill blood and give their lives for what they believed in. But he sensed a growing tension as the hour grew closer.
Cain punched hard with a right and then a left. And then a right. And then a left. Then he did some free weights for half an hour. Then the medicine ball. He pounded the treadmill, clocking up the miles, headphones on. Metallica blaring out loud. He felt the endorphins kicking in.
When Cain was finished, he showered and put on fresh clothes provided by the ex-military instructor who rented the property. It was a tight crew. The way he liked it. He knew each and every one of them.
He went up to the lounge area where Pearce was watching Fox.
“Hey, check this out, Hunter,” he said.
A blonde TV reporter was standing in front a taped-off police crime scene, a car with its doors opened, partially screened from onlookers. “Sources within the FBI have confirmed that three special agents have been shot dead, along with a woman who has not been formally identified. Speculation has mounted that the woman was the target of a gangland assassination.”
Cain stared at the TV and looked at Pearce. “Holy fuck.”
A cellphone begin to ring. Pearce answered. “Yeah, bro, talk to me.” He nodded and looked at Cain. “You want to speak to him?” A nod. Pearce handed him the phone. “Hunter, my brother.”
Cain gathered his thoughts as he stared at the TV image of the car. “Matt, what the fuck were you playing at?”
“Hunter, you asked me to take care of it.”
“You dumb fuck. I wanted her dead. Why didn’t you just kneecap the Feds?”
A long sigh. “Hunter … sorry, I don’t understand, man. I thought you wanted it dealt with?”
“I wanted it dealt with. You know what this is? This is ratcheting things up a notch or ten. Do you understand the heat that we’re going to get for this? Bad enough the jailbreak, but they’re going to dump this right back at my door now. And I’m telling you, man, I ain’t too happy about how you’ve handled this.”
“Hunter, man, what can I say? I thought I was following orders.”
“Since when did I say kill three Feds, you dumb fuck?”
“What do you want me to do?”
Hunter ran a hand through his hair. “You disappear, okay?”
“Got it.”
“No usual haunts. I mean really disappear.”
“Mexico?”
“Definitely not Mexico. They’ll have the borders sealed up real good.”
“Montana?”
“Montana is good. Wyoming is good. Just keep out of sight, and disappear. And keep your mouth shut.”
“Hunter, man, I didn’t realize it was going to go down like that.”
Cain sighed. “What’s done is done. The main thing is, she’s gone. But you need to get out of sight for the next two years. Maybe more.”
The line went dead.
THIRTY
Meyerstein was hooked up to a videoconference screen within Miami-Dade police HQ, her boss on the big screen staring down at her.
“Martha, with immediate effect I’m relieving you of your duties. Do you understand?”
“Sir, with all due respect, I’m not going to comply with that instruction.”
“Do you want me to fire you for insubordination?”
“Sir, I’m asking you to listen to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. This is a terrible day for the Bureau. This is a fuck-up. Three special agents killed and a witness all gunned down. I’m appalled.”
“So am I, sir.”
“Martha, this happened on your watch!”
“Sir, with all due respect, that’s bullshit. The special agent should have stopped Kathleen Burke before she left the safe house. She should have been restrained if need be. But as it was, he ignored Jon Reznick’s instructions to wait till there were two other cars to screen the getaway and act as a decoy.”
“What?”
“Sir, Kathleen Burke effectively just got up and stormed out of the house, and the two Feds just went along with it. Now I’m not pointing the finger. God rest their souls, they’re good men. But you know as well as I do, sir, that they should have secured the area, namely, the unpredictable Kathleen Burke, before they headed off. In effect they allowed her to bully them.”
O’Donoghue rubbed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “This doesn’t take away from the fact that you have already disobeyed an instruction and allowed Jon Reznick to continue with this investigation.”
“Sir, this is getting us nowhere. This Jon Reznick fixation does not address the failings of these two relatively inexperienced special agents. It most certainly would not have happened in Miami, for example.”
“Martha, you’re going to give me no choice. If you don’t accept this suspension, I will fire your ass out of the FBI. Now I don’t want to do it, you know that. But I can’t have this insubordination and recklessness.”
“Jon Reznick gave excellent advice to Kathleen Burke to stay put, and for two cars to be part of the operation to get her out of there. I also wanted to get her in the trunk, but she started going crazy, talking about being claustrophobic. The fact of the matter is that this terrible chain of events is the work of Hunter Cain.”
“The guy that escaped?”
“This is his payback.”
“Hang on, Martha. From what I heard, the actions of Jon Reznick may have sparked this.”
Meyerstein gathered her thoughts. “Sir, I think to point the finger at Jon Reznick as being in some way culpable because of his getting in a few Hell’s Angels’ faces at a clubhouse is really stretching things to breaking point.”
“Martha, I’m at breaking point. So should you be.”
“Sir, she was taken into safe custody. She was under the protection of the FBI. We fucked up, not Jon Reznick. It is just plain wrong to say we should have foreseen that Cain would send a tracking device within a silver cross. We are dealing with a very, very dangerous man. Who will stop at nothing. And deploy Aryan Brotherhood lone wolves to carry out whatever he wants. Sir, you don’t want to fire my ass. And I don’t want you to fire my ass. We need to catch Hunter Cain. And you know why?”
“You think he’ll still be planning a spectacular? After today?”
“Hunter Cain will stop at nothing.”
The director took a few moments to speak. “I’ve told the director of Homeland Security I was going to suspend you. He’s going to wonder who’s in charge of the FBI.”
“Sir, I’ve been on this for days since the breakout. Jon Reznick knows Hunter Cain better than anyone. If you want recriminations, suspensions and firings, fine, but not now. We’re all on the same side. Now is not the time for rash decisions. And I will make this promise, sir. I will find Hunter Cain, and I will bring him in, dead or alive. But I need Jon Reznick on this.”
The director stared down at her for what seemed like a lifetime. “I need to know something.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need to know if you think we can locate this Cain and apprehend him in time.”
“Sir, if he’s anything like Reznick says he is, this is not going to end well.”
“Very well. I’m not going to place any obstacles in your way. But I want Reznick to be on a
far tighter leash, you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Move with immediate effect to Miami FBI field office. I’ll message them myself.”
“Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. What about Homeland Security?”
“What about them?”
“What will they say?”
“Let me worry about them. Your job is simple: find Cain and neutralize this fucker. Do you understand?”
THIRTY-ONE
“What a fucking mess,” Reznick said, as he sat around a conference table at the FBI’s Miami field office as Meyerstein, Stamper and a dozen other counter-terrorism experts mulled over the sequence of events. He sipped some scalding-hot black coffee as they talked of scenarios and targets for Cain.
Reznick pushed his coffee aside, stood up and began to pace the room. He kicked over a trash can full of shredded paper. “Motherfucker!”
The room went quiet at Reznick’s outburst.
Special Agent Gillian Miller, who Reznick had met in DC, blushed. She cleared her throat. “So where does that leave us? Whatever is going to happen is going to go down in or around Miami. It narrows it down.”
Reznick looked at the faces around the table. “I mentioned previously about Hunter Cain’s obsession with Timothy McVeigh. Would the actions of this sidekick of his, gunning down three special agents, indicate that’s where they’re coming from?”
“I think it would indicate firstly how ruthless they are, clearly. But, yes, absolutely, it shows that Cain and his crew or terrorist cell, call it what you will, don’t give a damn for the lives of federal officers. McVeigh, as you’ll all know, had that same pathological hatred of government.”
Meyerstein leaned back in her seat. “Let’s leave all that to one side. I’m fairly certain we can say that Cain is a right-wing militia leader, and perhaps he’s in the same mold as McVeigh, with his military training. My problem is, where is he? So far, NSA has got nothing.”
Reznick nodded. “Which probably not only indicates that Cain is smart enough to change phones every day, maybe more than once a day, but also points to a network. A crew of people who are backing, supporting and helping Cain and these guys. People behind the scenes.” He looked over at Miller. “I know Hunter Cain well. I was in Delta alongside him. He’s a tough, tough fuck. Clearly off the scale now. But he’s not stupid. The killing of these three Feds would have annoyed him. He might not give a damn for the lives lost. But he’d be mightily pissed off that the mission he’s on, whatever it is, would attract attention from us. It’s one thing to kill his ex-girlfriend in FBI custody, which is a pretty unbelievable screw-up in the first place. But I was trained the same as him. The mission is everything. The mission is sacrosanct.”
Stamper looked up from his notes and glowered across at Reznick. “Jon, I don’t like you talking about screw-ups. Three FBI men died. And I don’t think this is the time or place to start pointing the finger of blame at colleagues of mine who have just been killed.”
“Roy, you wanna just move on? We need to focus on bringing down Cain and stopping whatever it is he’s planning.”
Stamper looked across at Meyerstein. “I don’t like him sitting in on meetings.”
Meyerstein leaned forward, hands clasped. “Too bad, Roy. Now, Gillian, I want the latest analysis on what’s happening.”
Special Agent Miller cleared her throat and took a drink of water. “Hunter Cain had a vast library in his cell. Hundreds of books piled up. Half of them were about Timothy McVeigh. Initially we were thinking it might be the start of an inter-militia war on control of meth dealing in Florida. But the current thinking seems to be that something big might very well be underway. There are currently four major events in town. A social media conference, a sci-fi convention, an Apple conference and a fundraising gala for Syrian refugees.”
Reznick sighed. “There’s nothing else happening in Miami?”
Meyerstein said, “Exactly what kind of things had you in mind, Jon?”
“G7 conference, security summit, Nato conference, intra-government type thing.”
Miller shrugged. “Nothing like that in Miami or Florida over the next year. There’s a visit by the president, but that’s penciled in by the Secret Service for next March.”
Reznick began to pace the room one more time. “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. He’s been sprung – and make no mistake he has been sprung – to carry out a big job. I don’t believe he would have been sprung to take out a Hell’s Angel, a meth dealer or some liberal senator. McVeigh attacked a federal building. Now I’m not saying that’s the target. But what I’m saying is that this is going to be big. Major. What does Cain know? He understands guns, rifles, tactical awareness, and it makes him a natural leader. If he wanted to kill a rival, he wouldn’t fuck around. He would just go, watch him, and kill him as soon as he could.”
Meyerstein threw down her pen. “Goddamn it, when are we going to get a break?”
Everyone around the table just stared at her but said nothing.
THIRTY-TWO
Hunter Cain pinned up a map of Fisher Island on the plasterboard wall of the basement of the Fisher Island house as Ken Pearce and Neil Foley sat, arms crossed. He made a black cross with a marker pen. “We are here.” Then he pointed to a location at the other side of the island. “This is where it’s going to go down.”
Pearce nodded but Foley said nothing.
“Like most operations, surprise is the best calling card. They won’t be expecting us. Why? Because we’re going to gain entry with uniforms worn only by staff inside the complex. Made to measure. And don’t worry – the outfits will cover the tats, okay?”
Foley stared at the map and sighed. “Hunter, can I be honest, man?”
Cain shrugged. “Of course. What’s on your mind, bro?”
“The objectives of the mission. They seem kinda blurry to me.”
Cain was surprised at Foley’s cooler tone. “Blurry? I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
“Don’t get me wrong, this is gonna be something unbelievable, but I’m wondering, what exactly will it achieve? I mean … I’m not too sure this has been really thought through. Just my take on it.”
Cain nodded. He felt a rage burning within him. He couldn’t abide indecision and people going cold on a plan. He liked decisiveness. “Well, okay, firstly, this has been thought through. By myself and others. And the objectives are pretty basic. Fundamental stuff. And there are going to be casualties. Any war has casualties, and inevitably there will be innocents who lose their lives. That’s just the way it is. It’s the way it’s always been.”
Foley sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Don’t get me wrong, Hunter, I’ve got no problem about shedding blood. You know that.”
Cain stared at Foley. He felt as if a switch had been flicked in his head.
“But … I don’t know … it all seems very sketchy, the objectives. I’m not feeling it.”
Cain cleared his throat. “Not feeling it.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I just want to know.”
Cain’s stomach knotted. “It’s about reclaiming our country back from the billionaires, the lobbyists, the corporations and the corrupt politicians. But it’s also a call to arms. We’re firing the starting gun in what we hope is an uprising. And, yeah, it’ll get messy. Ultimately this is about a second American revolution. Cleaning out the shit. Shocking ordinary Americans out of their lethargy. But it’s also about starting again. Starting clean.”
Pearce nodded, eyes glistening. “Absolutely.”
Cain took a step towards Foley. “What we don’t want is for the small guy, the ordinary Joe, to be downtrodden any longer in his own country. We want our country back. And we’re prepared to die doing so. Do you understand now?”
Foley opened the palms of his hands as if still not getting it. “Here’s the thing. While I absolutely agree with taking the figh
t to these fuckers, my question is, is this the right place and time to do it?”
Cain went quiet for a few moments. “Neil, I’m going to be very straight with you, bro. I love you, man. But I want you to be straight with me. Do you understand?”
Foley nodded. “Sure, can’t argue with that, man.”
“Neil, do you want out, is that it?”
Foley blew out his cheeks. “I don’t know.”
“You getting cold feet, is that it?”
“Yeah … I guess I am.”
Cain said nothing.
Foley shrugged. “Sorry, bro, I gotta be out. I got a family. I need to think of stuff like that.”
Cain stood and stared at Foley for a few moments. He stepped forward and reached out to shake Foley’s hand. The grip was tight. Then they hugged. “No hard feelings, bro. I admire your honesty.”
Foley turned and hugged Pearce.
Whilst Foley’s back was turned, Cain reached into his boots and pulled out a knife. He lunged forward and thrust it hard into Foley’s lower back three times. Blood spilled out of Foley’s shirt, pooling on the marble floor. He groaned and fell to his knees.
Foley looked up, eyes pleading, bleeding out everywhere.
Cain kneeled down. He grabbed Foley by the hair and stabbed him again and again in the chest. He must have stabbed him thirty, maybe forty times. He was drenched in Foley’s blood. He got to his feet and spat on Foley’s lifeless body. He turned and stared at Pearce, who was as impassive as ever. “It is what it is, right?”
“Fucker crossed the line, Hunter. You had no choice, man.”
“Exactly. Let’s get this cleared up and get the fuck out of here.”
THIRTY-THREE
It was a fifteen-minute recess and Reznick was pacing a windowless conference room in the FBI’s Miami field office as Meyerstein flicked through some briefing notes. He shook his head and looked around at the empty chairs. “Meyerstein, we’re missing something. Something doesn’t add up.”
