One Rough Man pl-1

by Brad Taylor

  I brought the weapon up to shoulder height, slowed my breathing, and drew a focused bead on the man’s head, squeezing the trigger. I saw a blossom of red appear between his eyes just as his finger frantically probed for the button a second time, and he toppled over backward, landing on the pack.

  102

  Jennifer had made the rental car switch at the river three blocks away when she heard an explosion, loud enough to vibrate her car. She saw a cloud of smoke rise up the street. Then she saw that it wasn’t smoke, but some sort of dust. It wasn’t rising, but hovering, gently floating about, segments slowly falling to earth, reminding her of videos she had seen after the towers fell on 9/11. She floored the vehicle, driving as fast as she could to get out of the area.

  She rolled into the airport exceeding the speed limit by thirty kilometers an hour. She had passed what must have been every police car and fire engine in Sarajevo, all headed to the explosion. She slammed on the brakes and ran to the Bell 427.

  “The terrorist blew up the market. The WMD is out!”

  For the first time, she noticed that the rotors were turning and the pilots were going through preflight. One said, “We know. The embassy’s already been alerted and is requesting military support. We’re getting out of here.”

  “What? You’re leaving? What about the guys at the market?”

  “We can’t do anything about that. Our higher knows the situation. It’s in their hands now. Our orders are to get the hell out of here.”

  “Are you serious? What about Pike and Knuckles? You can’t just leave.”

  The pilot stopped what he was doing and fixed her with an icy stare.

  “Ma’am, Knuckles was a teammate. More than that, he was my friend. I understand the situation. There’s nothing I can do about it. If anyone on the team is alive, they know what they need to do. We have a procedure for this type of contingency. My mission is to protect what I can at this point. I’m sorry, but that’s it.”

  He turned back to his preflight. Jennifer stood in shock, unsure of what to do. She remembered the man in her trunk.

  “Wait. I have the guy I was supposed to get. What about him?”

  The pilot stopped. He turned to his partner and said something. Both exited the helicopter. One took the keys from Jennifer, the other drew a pistol and aimed it at the trunk. Swinging it open, they found it empty. The pilot gave the keys back to Jennifer without saying a word. He had finished preflight and was preparing to crank up the rotors for good, when he exited one more time.

  “Look, I’m not sure what your whole story is or who you belong to, but let me give you some advice: I’d get on the first plane out of here. I’m sorry we can’t take you. I would if I could.”

  Still trying to process what was occurring, Jennifer simply nodded her head. She stood still until she was driven back by the rotor wash of the helicopter. She saw it take off, and continued to watch it until it was a speck in the sky. She walked in a circle, unsure of what to do next. On the far side of the airport, she could see a beehive of activity around the dignitaries’ planes.

  She went into the terminal and bought a ticket on a Bosnian airline headed to Frankfurt, Germany. It was due to leave in four hours. She went back to the rental car and tried to drive back into the city. She saw the lights flashing a mile out. She got within a half of a mile of the downtown before being stopped at a police checkpoint. The man spoke little English. All he could say was, “Go, Go. Poison.” She turned around and headed back the way she had come.

  She located the only hospital in the city and went to it. The place was a madhouse, with people in white running back and forth, and the wounded being brought in. She found someone who spoke English and asked about Americans. He told her he had not seen any Americans at all.

  She drove back to the airport. She didn’t feel grief. She didn’t feel anything except exhaustion, both physically and emotionally. The flight to Frankfurt was a blur. While she waited for her connecting flight, the event began to sink in. How had everything gone so bad so quickly? She had cautioned Pike on the danger, but in her heart she had really thought he was invincible. He’d survived time and time again, pulling out miracles as ordinary events. If anyone was going to die, it should have been her. How is this supposed to be justice? Where’s the destiny now? She put her head in her hands, trying to stop her thoughts. She heard someone talking to her and glanced up, seeing a Lufthansa Airlines ticket agent.

  “Ma’am, are you all right? Can I help you?”

  Because Pike had drilled it into her over the last four days, her first thought was she was making a scene. Act like the other passengers. You’re going to get burned. She was then hammered with the futility of the thought. What a joke. None of that helped in the end.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’m fine.”

  The agent looked as if he wasn’t convinced but left her alone.

  Thirty minutes later, he came back.

  “Ma’am, are you on this flight?”

  For the first time it registered that everyone had left the gateway.

  “Yes. Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “No problem, but we’re about to close the door. Are you sure you’re okay? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Can you bring back the dead? “I’m all right. Sorry for the trouble.”

  She landed at Dulles International Airport completely spent. She had no idea what she was going to do next. She had a connecting flight to Charleston but didn’t feel like getting on it. She felt like curling up in a ball and forgetting everyone and everything. She instinctively thought she should be crying or grieving over the loss of Pike, but all she felt was hollowness inside.

  She joined the immigration line, moving forward like sheep to a trough. She saw CNN on a TV across the immigration area. She caught the flash of Bosnia-Herzegovina and focused on the story. She couldn’t hear what was being said but saw a video of the market, men and women wandering in a daze, police waving the cameras back, firemen running holding bleeding bodies, and an incongruous single individual in a space-age bio-suit. The screen cut to a photo, the name Harold Standish beneath it. She had no idea what that was about and didn’t have the energy to care. She waited to see something about the president admitting the Taskforce’s existence or some other catastrophic news conference, but the story ended.

  She handed her passport to the man behind the counter. He scanned it and stiffened. She felt a stab of adrenaline, remembering what had happened in Atlanta, followed immediately by resignation. She had no strength to fight the bogus terrorist charge. At least it solves my problem of what to do next. Before the man could say anything, she said, “I’ll come with you. Just take me wherever you need to.”

  He looked at her suspiciously, saying, “Follow me.”

  He led her down a hallway to a small room that contained two folding chairs and a table. He told her to wait, then left, locking the door behind him.

  She sat for a half hour, mostly in a daze. She tried to remember her time with Pike, but her subconscious refused to engage. She was having a hard time seeing his face. She remembered the last thing he had said to her, and didn’t believe it. It wasn’t worth it. We should have let him get away. She laid her head on the table and began to cry. Sobs racked her body in convulsions. They slowly faded away, leaving her with the same drained, hollow feeling. She heard the door open and looked up, eyes red. She saw a man enter and smile.

  “Jennifer Cahill?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Mike. I’m from the Taskforce. You’re not in any trouble. I was waiting on you to land. Kurt Hale wanted to see you as soon as you hit U.S. soil. I’m supposed to take you to him.”

  She showed no emotion. “Okay. How’d you know I’d be coming here?”

  “We didn’t. We have folks at every major embarkation point in the U.S. We left the terrorist alert in place. Sorry.”

  She waved it away and stood up. “I could really give a shit about that. Let’s go get thi
s over with.”

  As they left the immigration area he asked about her luggage. She shrugged. “It’s in Bosnia. I don’t have any.”

  They walked in silence for the rest of the way, exiting the airport. Getting to the car, he tried one more time to draw her into a conversation.

  “I understand you ended up finding and stopping the terrorist.”

  She looked at him like he was an idiot. “I guess so, if you believe forcing him to blow everyone up early is stopping him.”

  He put the car in drive and didn’t say another word. The rest of the trip was spent in silence. As they got onto the toll road, the weather turned sour, with rain beating the metal of the car. The only sound was the windshield wipers flipping back and forth.

  Jennifer gazed out the window, ignoring the drive. Eventually, the car pulled into a checkpoint. She registered that the car had stopped, then realized where they were.

  “Why are we here?”

  “This is where Kurt is at the moment. I was told to bring you straight to him.”

  The guard waved them through to the West Wing parking area of the White House.

  After a short walk, Jennifer stood outside the White House situation room, waiting to be asked to enter. The door opened and she saw a long table surrounded by wood-paneled walls with multiple plasma screens. She immediately recognized the president of the United States at the head of the table. He stood and approached her.

  “Hello, young lady, we’ve been waiting for you. I’m Payton Warren,” he said, extending his hand.

  Jennifer didn’t even begin to know what to say so she simply shook his hand, mute.

  To his left was Kurt Hale. She looked around, recognizing the secretary of state and the secretary of defense. She saw other faces that she didn’t know, but felt she should, vague recollections from Sunday news shows. What’s this all about? Why am I here? She went from face to face, waiting on someone to tell her what to do. At the far end she saw a man with a horrendous visage. His face was scabbed, without any eyebrows. His arm was in a sling, a set of crutches to the side of his chair. He was smiling at her. The smile was real and familiar.

  103

  I saw Jennifer look from face to face, waiting for her to get to me, wanting to see the same glow I had experienced when she entered the room.

  It dawned on me that I had been subconsciously holding back, protecting myself from the meat-cleaver of disappointment if it was a case of mistaken identity and someone else was at the Dulles Airport. Maybe secretly protecting myself against the trauma of having the newly formed scab covering the loss of my family ripped out raw had the unthinkable happened. In that moment, I realized that Jennifer had been right in Bosnia: Her death would have destroyed me completely. Left me broken beyond repair.

  I watched Jennifer continue to search for some indication of why she was here or someone she recognized. She looked like shit. Like she’d spent the last twenty-four hours sleeping on park benches and knew the next twenty-four hours held nothing but the same. She finally got to me. I saw her face change from a lack of recognition to one of shock, then she fell backward into a chair. Not exactly what I expected.

  From behind her, Knuckles jumped up, saying, “Whoa! Hang on there. You okay?”

  I could tell she recognized him, but she simply stared like she was seeing a ghost.

  He asked again, “Jennifer? You all right?”

  Something clicked within her, and without a word, she jumped up and raced over to me.

  Holy shit, she’s going to hug me. It would hurt, but I didn’t want to stop her.

  She stopped short, smiling, tears running freely down her face. She leaned over and gingerly kissed my forehead on the crew-cut of singed hair.

  “You bastard. I guess you do have ten lives.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, I guess so. Took you long enough to get home. I was starting to worry.”

  She ignored everyone else in the room, simply taking my hands into hers and staring at me. After a second, she seemed to remember where she was, and what had led to this meeting. She asked, “What happened? What’s going on? Why isn’t everyone dead?”

  Kurt said, “Well, we ended up being very, very lucky. Scientists are still studying the material, but it looks like the WMD was only deadly to those genetically predisposed.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  I took over. “The weapon they found was an ancient sack of spores from a plant that’s probably extinct. It causes major anaphylactic shock in people predisposed to be allergic to it. Basically, it causes the same reaction as in someone allergic to bee stings, only a hundred times worse.”

  “Okay… that still sounds pretty bad. Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is, but I managed to kill Carlos before he could set off the device. He fell on top of it, which somehow caused it to go off. His body tamped down the explosion, like a soldier jumping on a grenade. On top of that, it looks like folks from Europe aren’t nearly as susceptible to the spores as guys from Guatemala, where they came from. Luckily, I fall into that camp.”

  Jennifer processed that, coming to the natural conclusion, “So, the whole thing was a waste of time? All that death and destruction for nothing? Ethan’s death—”

  The president spoke. “No, not at all. The bomb killed close to fifty people, but the team forced the terrorist to set it off far enough away from the ceremony that the representatives attending were able to escape before they were contaminated. Because of our unique security relationship with Bosnia, we were immediately asked for help. Most of the deaths were caused by the spores, but we were able to alleviate any concerns of a WMD rapidly, taking the emotion out of the attack. There’ll be conspiracy theories for years about it, but the majority of the world thinks it was a conventional attack.”

  Kurt interjected, “Mainly because the terrorist put all his faith in the spores and didn’t embed any shrapnel in the explosive. He also knew what he was doing. He kept the explosive power low to prevent burning up the WMD material, which worked in our favor, especially when his own body lessened the blast radius. If he had set off a conventional bomb with higher explosives and shrapnel, we probably would have had the same amount of casualties, so the story’s plausible.”

  The president continued. “If he had made it to Israel, and had been able to implicate the Iranians, it would have caused immediate retaliation. He would’ve killed hundreds, and Israel would have feared a second strike. Unlike Bosnia, they wouldn’t have asked for our help or listened to any pleadings of restraint. Trust me, the WMD was real. Real enough to get us into World War Three.”

  “Okay… I guess that’s good news…. Wait, that didn’t come out right. I mean I’m glad the effort was worth it. I couldn’t live with Ethan’s death on my conscience if this was all for nothing.”

  She squeezed my hands, her face now alive, the broken look gone. “Ahh… this is a bit much to take in all at once. I’m not sure why I’m here. What do you need from me?”

  The president spoke again. “Nothing. We were meeting here to discuss the repercussions of the whole affair when you landed. I asked for you to come here simply to thank you. You have immeasurably helped the country, and quite possibly the world. Your perseverance deserves my thanks as the representative of the American people.” He gave his winning campaign smile. “That’s all I wanted to say. If there’s any way I can help you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Jennifer winked at me, then smiled at the president with all the charm she could muster — which was substantial. Uh-oh.

  “Well, sir, I appreciate it. I really do. Unfortunately, I promised Pike I was going to kick someone’s ass in the U.S. government for leaving us hanging out there. I suppose I should start with you. Can you help with that?”

  I closed my eyes. I cannot believe she just said that. When I opened them again I saw a roomful of the most powerful people on earth looking anywhere but at her. I could tell she was enjoying this immensely. She continued. “Then again, you guys did do the
right thing in the end, so maybe I’ll let it go. I guess all’s well that ends well.”

  I squeezed her arm a little harder than was necessary, trying to shut her up before she did some real damage.

  “Hey, guess what?” I said. “The folks you want to beat up took care of our little problem in Charleston. We don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

  I thought she was going to rip into the rest of the group just for the enjoyment, and prayed she wouldn’t. She grinned at me and said, “Okay, then, how about a nice hotel room?”

  The room broke into relieved laughter. The president said, “I think I can manage that.”

  He grew serious again. “Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate your time, but I have a press conference in an hour. I can’t thank you enough for your service.”

  The meeting broke up with people shaking hands and saying good-bye. Shortly we found ourselves outside, me hobbling along on my broken ankle with Jennifer trying unsuccessfully to help. Eventually, everyone was gone and it was just us. She looked around, noticing we were alone.

  “Where are we going? Better yet, how are we getting there?”

  I said, “I guess we go hail a cab.”

  “Wow,” she said, “that thank-you didn’t last very long.”

  Jennifer began walking toward the gate with me hobbling along beside her, when someone shouted behind us.

  “Jennifer… Pike?”

  “Yes.”

  “The president asked me to give you guys a ride to the Hay-Adams Hotel here in D.C. You have the Presidential Suite, compliments of the White House.”

  “All right,” she said. “That’s more like it.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later Jennifer was admiring the view from the living room of our suite, the White House majestic in the last glimmers of twilight. Now that we were alone, she brought out the questions she knew nobody but me would answer.