by I.B. Holder
*****
Boots thudded against the compressed soil, kicking up the top layer of dust just enough to cloud the next foot’s descent into the fresh footprint that came before. It was too organized for a stampede, anyway. Hooves rarely supported the kind of weaponry of these lethal pack animals.
A sea of cars separated a battalion of agents from multiple sets of ascending stairs that led to a brightly lit arena thumping with bass in an evening sky dominated by a an almost metallic silver full moon.
Wilkes didn’t like the long shadows cast by his agents, they were shrieking announcements in a quiet business. Everything was amplified tonight however. The voices on the radio were a little too frosty, they knew who their prey had in captivity. Laura wasn’t a picture on the news to some of these young men and women. Imagine the effect of the personification of the agency they served, on continual tortured display. A bitter anger fueled an acidic smell on the breath of his field agents. Wilkes knew that he had to keep everyone on a short leash tonight, and even if he didn’t he had Legacy in his ear reminding him.
“What if it’s not tonight?” Wilkes had asked Legacy not an hour before while he was on route to the site.
“It will be tonight, I’ll stake your reputation on it.” A hint of warmth in the ice that had formed between these old acquaintances, Wilkes had to cover his chuckle by clearing his throat.
Chrome reflections of helmet-clad agents distorted their strides making them impossibly long and fluid. The tightly packed cars forced the agents into a single file zigzag path. The private security guards had told Wilkes that the situation was under control.
Sabita Fare was a complicated, sarcastic version of the reproduction of youth and beauty that pop promoters had almost given up on before she came along. Her name, pronounced like Tabitha with an ‘S’, was better known than the president among teens and tweens. Of course the president never had a hit single or a show on Disney TV. She had a private army guarding her because at 17, she was the most stalked persona in the world. Smeared eyeliner became her trademark, as well as her ability to well into tears while standing strong and belting out her newest hit “Tear Seduction” in a crystal clear lyric pop voice. The story within the song told of a girl who used the tears of one break up to seduce her next man.
The childish whim embodied in the double entendre of the bridge she currently shouted into the night sky with a mixture of triumph and loss, “irresistible miss, irresistible misery, irresistible miss me, miss me, now you’ve got to kiss me.” Lyrics like these set her above the bubble gum, boyfriend-likes-my-best-friend songs that earned her contemporaries one record in the charts followed by a predictable spokesmodel gig in the mid-twenties, and a predictable thirties rehab.
The crowd roared as her voice cracked - a well-practiced, oddly melodic squeal. The commotion around her in the deep shadows of the wings was not unusual, not that she would have noticed anyway. When Sabita took the stage, her devotion was to the next note.
The cheers of a packed crowd of teenage boys and girls filled the outdoor auditorium to capacity and spilled out of the exits. It reached fever pitch when she put her ruby lips to the microphone and chirped, “Thanks, goodnight.”
In a spry transformation, she walked gracefully off stage, her hips following the beat of an internal tune. Calls of “We love you!” and “One more song!” followed her into the pitch black. A hand clamped down on her arm immediately as she came off the stage and a voice shouted above the crowd. “No encore tonight honey, we need to get you out of here.”
It was her father. He had taken a call from an FBI Agent Wilkes as his daughter first stepped out into the spotlight. He hurried her through the backstage maze toward the sanctuary of the trailer. Wilkes had promised to take her into protective custody. Until then, there was hardly a safer place for her than in front of twenty thousand adoring fans. On the way from the stage, he ran into two private security officers, one a towering man, the other a bit diminutive. They proceeded to grab the outside arms of the couple protectively and guide them backstage.
The corridors were surprisingly empty as they navigated the way down below street level. The security officers were of the minimum wage variety, and they exuded boredom and more of a commitment at sneaking peaks at Sabita’s low cut bustier wet with sweat after a strenuous concert than noticing their surroundings. They never paused to look deeply enough into the shadows to notice two unconscious guards, stripped of their uniforms. The bodies were hidden only feet from the intersecting corridors they were about to pass. Everyone was looking straight ahead.
“Wilkes.” Legacy’s voice crackled in Wilkes’ ear, and in an unconscious reaction his teeth ground together. Enamel on enamel, he hadn’t taken orders in the field in almost a decade. Legacy showed his characteristic sensitivity. “Wilkes, I’m telling you to seal off the area now, the men who have Laura are in that arena.”
“That has yet to be established.” Wilkes grumbled.
“It’s a fact.” Silently, and eagerly, a part of Wilkes already knew that it was true. Skepticism was the inherited mask of caution that all upper level bureaucrats wore to work. Rising to the position of director had changed Wilkes. It had made him risk averse, but his memories still overflowed with decisions made that were way over the lines as they were currently drawn. He was like an impressionist painter who’d gone back to painting realistic bowls of fruit – his current product was solid, tangible and acceptable.
Wilkes responded, “I thought I’d wrecked this train.” It was the first time he’d mentioned the leak. Legacy said, “It would be more appropriate if this concert were in Phoenix.”
“Out of the ashes, eh?” Wilkes warmed up.
“Who do you have leading the team?” Legacy asked as if no answer would please him.
“The best I’ve got. I had to pull him off of his assignment babysitting on this wasteland of an agent who used to be my friend.” He said.
Legacy replied, “How many people were watching me?”
Legacy remembered the operations that Wilkes supervised back in the day. “I don’t want perfect intel, that’s the easiest kind to fuck up. I just want to know one more thing about my opponent than he knows about me.” He still operated that way. Wilkes would have one more person-watching Legacy than he knew about if he had to fill the entire Alexandria office.
There was something strange laced into his memories of Wilkes, it felt like respect but tasted bitter. He had known that Wilkes answered to a higher power, which meant he twisted the information that Legacy exacted from his targets like a rifle spins a bullet inside a barrel. It’s supposed to make the result more accurate, deadly – but part of Legacy never believed that Wilkes had the aim or the taste for the kill. People who rise to director status either have a taste for the kill or they live in compromise. Legacy didn’t trust compromise.
Wilkes’ voice crackled through, coming to a sharp point “They’re at the gate.”
Legacy changed gears for a moment and thought about how boring it must be assigned to look over his shoulder. There was absolutely no challenge to eavesdropping on Legacy. After a short time, the unfortunate agent certainly would figure out that he barely noticed additional presences when they shouted at him. He’d come out of the woodwork and stand paces from him in the sunlight, but he’d never understand a thing about Legacy. So unless Legacy himself opened up – the mistake he’d made with Wagner – the poor mole would be privy to absolutely nothing.
Poor bastard, he thought with a sardonic grin.
