by John Grit
“I admire your ambition, but that’s a bit much for one woman.”
She laughed. “We’re going to need more flash drives.”
“We’ll also need those padded shipping envelops. I’ll wait until you’ve used what flash drives we have, so I can keep an eye out for trouble while your mind’s on the computer.”
Suddenly somber, she said, “One of the names is President Preston Riley.”
He blinked. “What, did the company have you take someone out on his behest?” He wasn’t serious and expected her to say no.
She nodded, tears streamed down her face. “I was told she was a terrorist purposely infected with a deadly plague and she was going to carry it into the U.S. The plan was to kill her while she was still in Italy. I found out later she had been lured to Italy by the president. She wasn’t on any terrorist mission, but went there to have a rendezvous with him and plan how he was going to leave his wife and announce to the press that he was in love with her and going to marry her. God was she naïve. But she wasn’t as bad as me, believing anything I was told. After all, it was the CIA, the U.S. Government. They would never have me kill an innocent American.”
Carla’s face revealed shame and hurt. “She was two months pregnant with the president’s baby and had refused to quietly abort it.” Carla turned away. “She was twenty years old. Just an innocent girl who had been used by a powerful man that didn’t want anyone to know he had cheated on his wife.” She smeared her face. “I doubt it would have cost him a second term, the way things are nowadays. Most voters don’t care about a politician’s love life. When I joined up, I thought I was going to protect Americans, not murder them for sleeping with a politician.”
He held her. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I was ashamed. Why do you think I quit before you did? When I learned I had murdered an innocent woman just to save a president’s career and reputation, I could no longer dance to their tune. It’s a shock to your belief system to learn the U.S. Government is the biggest, most powerful, and deadliest street gang in the world. Killing enemies of our country out of self-defense is a sickening job that I reluctantly signed on to do, but murder for political favors that have nothing to do with protecting over three hundred million Americans is inexcusable. I refuse to be a part of that.” She looked down in shame. “I wasn’t sure how you would react. It took me this long to get the nerve to tell you.” She summoned the courage to look at him for a second and then diverted her eyes. “You’re a Boy Scout with your own set of morals that you don’t ever violate. Like never harming innocents.” She raised an eyebrow and gave him a wintry smile. “Of course you don’t think twice about killing assholes that violate your rules. Well, I violated your rules.”
Raylan gently held her chin up and looked her in the eyes. “What? You thought I would blame you for being used? They use people. That’s what they do. The fact you feel so bad about it proves you would never have killed her if you had known the truth. They use people like tools and fools, Carla, pulling our strings, using our desire to serve the American people to get what they want. We both quit for the same reasons.”
She kissed his cheek. “Going after the boss doesn’t scare you?”
“All they can do is kill us.” He held her face in both hands. “If they want to see the show, they first have to buy the ticket. I plan to make that ticket as costly as possible. Hanging their dirty laundry out for the public to gawk at is part of it.”
~~~
It was mid morning when Raylan stepped out of the car and disappeared into the store. He came back with a couple subs and drinks, as well as two dozen more flash drives, all they had on display. He ate while she worked. “After we’re through here, we’ll need another car. This one will probably be burned by security cameras. Driving a stolen car around is asking for trouble, anyway. We’re bound to be pulled over by a cop sooner or later.”
She inserted another flash drive into the computer. “Then they’ll know we’re in town when the police find the ditched car.”
“They’ll know in a few days when our packages are delivered to newspapers and politicians.”
“I think we should send it to the headquarters of the smaller political parties,” she said, “such as the Libertarians and Tea Party, as well as the Constitution Party.”
“Everyone but the Socialist and Communist parties,” Raylan said. “Hell, we’ll send one to the anarchists. I would leave the KKK, Nazis, and Black Panthers out, though.”
~~~
Raylan would never have recognized Carla as she walked to the newly purchased Ford Explorer, if he hadn’t helped her with the disguise. They bought the Explorer from a man who advertised in the Classifieds section of a Virginia paper. The title had been filled out by the owner and notarized by the man’s wife. Raylan planned not to bother getting the title transferred to his name, and therefore there would be no paper trail for their pursuers to follow. The tag was good for three more months.
She dumped several newspapers on the seat and got in. “Nothing,” she said. “Not a single word.”
He cranked the engine and drove through the small parking lot, then pulled onto the country road and headed for their forest campsite. “They’re afraid. And for good reason. Still, at least one of them will print something – after they’ve checked out our stories as much as they can. We included plenty of details, and they will soon realize we’re not kooks and we’re not bullshitting them.”
She didn’t seem so sure. “You still have a lot of faith in the press, considering most of them are the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party and most of the rest are in the Republican Party’s back pocket.”
“Remember, we sent a flash drive to the Punk Report. Those college kids were the first to report on President Flemington getting a BJ while on the phone with the Pentagon and sending troops to their deaths in Syria. They’ll take the ball and run with it. Then other news agencies will be shamed into reporting on it.”
“Yeah, maybe. And what good did that do? He still got two terms. Nobody gave a shit about the dead soldiers who died for nothing.” She slammed her right hand against the padded dash. “What about all the politicians we sent a flash drive to? Not a peep from any of them. You would think we’d have at least one honest member of Congress.” She watched the greenery of a heavy mountain forest zoom by. The peaceful scene calmed her a little, but what ate at her guts just wouldn’t let up. “God damn it! America wake up!”
He pulled off onto a dirt road and stopped a few hundred yards into the trees. “You can get out and scream and cuss. It might make you feel better.”
She opened her door. “Good idea.”
Raylan noticed she took the MP5 with her, covered by a jacket draped over her arm. He got out and stood beside her on the edge of a scenic mountain precipice. “It’ll take a while to check our stories and then more time to check with their lawyers and then more time to grow enough balls to report it.”
She snorted. “It’ll take them a week to get over the shock.”
“We did drop a lit stick of dynamite into their laps. First, they had to take a shower and change their pants, and then they took a few stiff drinks and smoked a few joints. By that time, they didn’t give a damn about anything. So, yeah, it’ll be a little longer. But once it finally pops, it’ll spread like wildfire all over the world.”
She screamed at the mountain on the other side of the gorge. “Will any of this make any difference? God, are you listening?” There was no answer.
Raylan put his right arm over her shoulders. “It’ll certainly make a difference to us. We’ll know we did our best to warn the American people that their government is as corrupt as any other criminal organization.”
She leaned against him. “The difference it’ll make for us is we’ll both be dead soon.”
He held her tighter. “We were dead before we ever broke our vow of nondisclosure. My only regret is having dragged you into this. You were legally out of it and home
free.”
“There is no home free, no forgetting, no escaping what we’ve done, what we must live with.” Her voice grew angry. “That’s a hell of a thing to say. You have no right to think of me as an accessory after the fact. Hell, I’m the one who has gone after the president.”
His puzzlement lasted for all of three seconds. Then he held her face and kissed her. “No fool would ever think of you as an accessory.”
Forcing a smile, she looked up at him. “Let’s buy some liquid giggles and go back to the camp and have an orgy. My preference is expensive champagne, but I know you like bourbon. We’ve already lost our immortal souls, so what’s to lose?”
Her eyes told him she wasn’t completely joking. “I don’t know about losing our souls. We thought we were serving our country.”
She started back to the car. “Well, some say God is lenient on fools. Maybe we’re not damned after all.”
~~~
A week later, Raylan handed a pile of papers through the car window to Carla. “The shit has hit the fan!”
She tore through the papers in her lap. Headline after headline blared in bold letters: Ex-CIA Agents Expose Corruption, Highest Levels of Government Involved. Another headline read: CIA – Murder for Hire. Still another read: Ex-CIA Operative Claims President had Mistress Killed.
She read from one of the biggest and most respected newspapers in the U.S.: “The two agents, who provided the names Raylan Maddox and Carla Baylor, gave enough details that our investigators were able to verify they are what they claim to be and most likely are telling the truth about the crimes and corruption that go all the way to the White House. Such details include where and at what time periods they trained and what the training entailed, what part of the world they were in at particular dates over the last decade or more, and who they killed (under CIA orders) and on what date and in what city. They even included the method of assassination, such as bombs or the type of firearm used.
“There is plenty of evidence to lead us to believe they are also being truthful in their claims that the CIA has been trying to kill them over the last two weeks, in that they have provided details and locations of shootouts and dead bodies discovered by local police, and we have verified every single detail to be accurate, including details not revealed in news reports and therefore not common knowledge.
“To further verify their claims, we have asked former CIA antiespionage and terror experts their opinion of the duo’s accusations. They gave their opinions in writing, stating the authors of the accounts sent to our newspaper are who they claim to be. They refused, however, to make any statement as to the veracity of their accusations, only that the authors are not posers or frauds. But our investigators have looked into several of their accusations of killings overseas and in South America and have found far too many verified details and facts to brush aside their claims without further investigation. We are looking into this matter and will not stop until we are one hundred percent satisfied the accusations of the two former agents are false. As of the time this report was written, it is our opinion, as sickening as it is, that the claims just may be true. We implore Congress and the president to investigate all accusations and to provide full disclosure of the results. This may prove to be a constitutional crisis of the highest order, and our system of democracy is at stake. We also beg President Riley to tell the American people the truth as he knows it and to do it today. God help us all if President Riley is guilty of ordering the CIA to murder an innocent woman and her unborn baby.”
Raylan shook her hand. “Congratulations. We just started a shit storm.” He cranked the car. “You know this will not satisfy them. We better go to the camp and start typing on the laptop again. We need details, more and more details.”
“Yep,” Carla said. “They’ll damn sure try their best to make liars out of us.”
“And all the while they’ll be hunting us.”
She bit her lip. “Wouldn’t want to place bets on us living another month.”
“We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see.”
Carla whipped her head around and stared at him. “You’re not still thinking of reaching out to active agents? I told you – there’s no such thing as a friend in Langley or Washington.”
He checked the rear view mirror for trouble. “I’m your friend.”
She blew a lung full of air. “Yeah, but you ain’t in Langley.”
~~~
Raylan sat under a tree near the tent Carla and he had been sleeping in for two weeks and tapped at Carla’s laptop, adding another mission to the list to help prove they were who they said they were. They would send out more flash drives to the papers and political groups that proved themselves most interested in the truth and had the ability to search for it. His thoughts strayed, and he found himself reminiscing over a mission that went wrong.
Moscow, five years ago.
Raylan cut the first guard’s throat and used a grappling hook and rope to scale the wall that surrounded the home of one of the most ruthless white slave traders in the world. It wasn’t his slave business that made him a target of the CIA, he was certain, but it was the reason Raylan didn’t mind this mission. Killing him was just Ex-Lax for the human race. More than likely, Janowski had put his nose in the wrong place, or had gotten too friendly with an enemy of the U.S. Perhaps he was trading in WMDs. The reason for the kill was seldom revealed to the operative.
After dealing with several more guards, he disabled the alarm system and picked the lock on the back door. Not wanting to relive the two kills he committed on the first floor, his mind skipped over many details, including the opulence of the massive villa. Upstairs, he advanced down a hallway and into the first bedroom he encountered. He had no intel on the layout of the interior of the home and therefore no idea which room the slave dealer would be in. It just made sense to start with the first room he came to and work his way down the hall until he killed Janowski.
Unfortunately the room was occupied by a younger man, not his target. Raylan’s bad luck grew worse when the man woke before he was able to extricate himself from the room, forcing Raylan to cut his throat after a brutal struggle. The man had been well trained and gave Raylan a hell of a fight. The will to live and one quick jab to the eye with his left thumb were what saved Raylan that night. The sharp knife helped.
Several more rooms proved to be empty. Then he entered the master bedroom and found a middle-aged woman asleep in bed, most likely the target’s wife. He held a rag wet with a quick-acting drug over her mouth and nose to put her out for an hour, and then bound and gagged her with duct tape. It was all an attempt to keep her from waking and becoming a collateral casualty, as her son had. He noticed there was a pistol on the nightstand next to her. Certainly, she could be a threat. A quick search of the home confirmed Janowski was not there, so he slipped back over the wall and down the street behind a large tree to wait for him to show up. He kept a Dragunov rifle ready. It fired a round fully powerful enough to penetrate a car’s body, even light armor. The scope had night vision capability. Russian-made, it was a poor substitute for fourth-generation American night vision technology, but would do on this night. After waiting two hours and forced to leave before the guards’ third shift arrived to find the bodies, he gave up and left the country, his one chance lost. Some other operative would have to kill him, perhaps months later when Janowski let his guard down or traveled to an area of the world where he would be more vulnerable. It was one of only two failed missions in his career. Even so, he still had the highest success rate of any field agent in CIA history and didn’t feel too bad about that. It was leaving a walking turd like Janowski alive to brutalize more victims that pissed him off.
Raylan remembered how his supervisor was fired not long after that. There had been a mix-up, he had been told. Janowski wasn’t to be touched. The orders came straight from the Director. It was later he learned Janowski was Director Dulling’s true employer, not the U.S. Government or the American people.
<
br /> ~~~
Carla typed on her laptop, remembering another time she was lied to and was sent to kill, not in defense of the American people, but to profit a CIA official.
Seven years ago, near a small town in Durango, Mexico.
Carla steered the Toyota Land Cruiser to the roadside and stopped to check her GPS. The $85,000 luxury SUV was a stupid choice of vehicles, but that’s what they issued her, so she just gritted her teeth and hoped it didn’t attract a carjacking. Perhaps someone had decided it would be safer for her if she appeared to be the mistress of a powerful drug lord out for a spin in Sugar Daddy’s car. Someone was wrong. Certainly it was the wrong vehicle for Mexico. But what the hell. She had dealt with dumber decisions by higher-ups before.
She was outside of a poverty-stricken hamlet on a desolate little dirt road, half a mile from the target. There was no traffic at a little past midnight, and there would have been little at noon, she imagined. Even so, she didn’t hang around. She backed the Land Cruiser into some brush so it couldn’t be seen from the target’s home. According to her study of the area, it was a quiet region where neighbors kept to themselves and didn’t poke their noses into the business of others. It seemed to be one of those places where people fled to hide from other people. That was exactly what her target was doing. Too bad for him it didn’t work. Everyone in the nearby homes would be asleep at that hour, as few in the area had electricity, and there was little to do at night but read by the light of a kerosene lamp, drink, or make love.
She killed the headlights and engine, and exited the SUV, grabbing her backpack and weapons. As was her custom, she had turned off the interior dome light so it wouldn’t alert anyone to her presence. The H&K MP5 submachine gun she pulled from under a spare jacket on the seat was one of her favorites. This one wasn’t chambered in 9 millimeter, though. It was chambered in the much more powerful 10 millimeter round, a caliber the FBI once adopted after learning their former pistol rounds were not enough to stop a determined killer. It wasn’t long, though, before they decided the 10 millimeter was a bit too much in the other direction and adopted the .40S&W caliber for their pistols. Nevertheless, the 10 millimeter was a wonderful submachine gun round, Carla’s favorite for times like this when she needed the extra power. She screwed on the H&K’s suppressor. The range would be so close, she didn’t worry about the hypersonic crack of the bullet passing through the atmosphere. No one would hear it. In fact, the impact of the bullet and the metallic sound of the bolt working back and forth would be louder than the suppressed report of the weapon.
