Rogue Agent

by Kellie Wallace

  ROGUE AGENT

  Kellie Wallace

  ROGUE AGENT

  Copyright © 2015 by Kellie Wallace.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: March 2016

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-546-9

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-546-0

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To Ellie and Claire, my two bright stars.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  Oklahoma, 2040

  Seth Langdon kicked a broken shard of glass and watched it skip across the concrete. The accompanying echo momentarily distracted him from mind-numbing boredom. Yearning for a cigarette, he dug in his pockets to keep his hands busy. His fingers brushed against the coolness of his cell phone and he pulled it out to check the time.

  Seven minutes and twenty-four seconds.

  That was how long he had to wait until his next appointment and they couldn’t come quickly enough. Tapping his foot impatiently, he patted his jacket pockets for smokes and remembered they were sitting on the passenger seat of his car. Shit. He’d have to leave them there. Even if he snuck out, he would miss the drop off and Spencer would have his balls in a grinder.

  The stench of oil wafted in the air and Seth licked his teeth to remove the taste. He blew out a frustrated breath and gazed around the factory. Graffiti canvassed the steel walls, dripping from ancient machinery and ply boards. Animal droppings cushioned his feet, old and fresh.

  He looked up at the rusting warehouse trusses and squinted. A bird-sized shadow stared back at him. Was it an owl or a figment of his imagination? He didn’t know what kind of scavengers lurked in the darkness. He had found a half-eaten fox at his last kill site. Nothing surprised him anymore.

  The wind picked up outside, smashing leafless branches against the soiled windows, dropping the temperature so low Seth could see his breath. A fire pit burned in the corner. The old ammunition factory had been out of commission for fifty years, and the fire pit still worked. He craved to take respite and warm his hands for a few seconds, but there was no time now. They had come.

  A glowing event horizon materialized in front of him, spawned from thin air. Seth promptly stripped off his scarf, tossed it aside, and drew the revolver at his hip. An ear piercing noise emanated from the orb like a woman’s distorted scream and the wind grew with the strength of a hurricane. The timber front doors blew open, sucking cold air and debris into the factory.

  Seth didn’t flinch, familiar with the sight, though he bit the inside of his cheek. He’d done it thousands of times, but every target was different, random. He couldn’t predict how they would react when they knew their life was ending. Some fought back, others just sat and cried. Those were the difficult ones to kill.

  A figure dropped from the event horizon, spewed out like a last meal, moaning insistently. He was a thin, wiry man in a cheap gray suit and scuffed business shoes.

  Seth approached slowly, his soles clicking against the concrete. The man froze and looked around him, catching sight of Seth. He froze momentarily, as if deciding if the man coming toward him was real. “Pl-please don’t hurt me. I have a wife and daughter!”

  The need for a cigarette intensified. Seth’s grip on the revolver tightened and he sucked in an indignant breath. He grabbed the man’s arm with lightning speed and pushed up his sleeve. A tattoo of the date and location was stamped into his pale skin. All victims were branded upon arrival at head office. Names were never disclosed to prevent attachment.

  “What do you want from me?” the man wailed. “I have money, heaps of it. You can have it all!”

  Seth shifted his weight onto his other polished shoe. This wasn’t the first time someone had offered a reward in return for their life. It was tempting, and other agents had succumbed to greed, but Seth wasn’t so easily seduced. He liked to get the job done and get out, that was his mantra. In and out.

  Normally, a kill meant taking the shot and leaving, but Seth was in a talkative mood so he decided against protocol.

  “I’m not interested in your wealth so nothing you say will sway me,” he said, clicking the safety off his gun.

  “No!” The man jerked his arm from Seth’s grasp and rolled to the side in a lazy combat roll. His forehead made contact with the concrete with a sickening crunch, though it didn’t hinder his getaway attempt. “Get away from me!”

  Seth snickered at the comedy playing out in front of him, watching his prey clamber away with his ass in the air. His bound wrists made him look even more ridiculous.

  “I’ve rigged the entire perimeter with explosives so the only place you’re going is the morgue.”

  “You’re lying! Stay away.”

  When the man reached the doors, Seth quickened his pace and blocked the exit with his body. “Hey, what’s your name?”

  The man refused to move from the spot, his eyes frozen wide. “Why the fuck do you want to know? You’re here to kill me.”

  “Tell me your name!”

  “David,” he blurted. “My name’s David Bloom.”

  “That wasn’t so hard.”

  “I’ve heard stories about men like you.” David’s courage was breaking through and Seth didn’t like it. “Associates of mine have gone missing and have never been found.” He narrowed his eyes. “What have I done to warrant my death?”

  Seth lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug, inwardly chastising himself for breaking the number-one rule: Never interact with the target. Ever.

  “Don’t know,” he replied sharply. “I’m only given the coordinates, not the name or background of the target.”

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “I’m not answering that question.”

  “Why not? You obviously made the decision to talk to me and ask questions,” David said. “You agents are all the same, brain-dead, order-taking monkeys.”

  The calm inside Seth snapped and he drove the pistol into David’s forehead. “Shut the fuck up! I’m not a brain-dead monkey here, however, I did make the wrong decision to talk to you.”

  With his free hand, he withdrew a hog cleaver from his back pocket. David froze at the sight of it. “Good, I have your attention.” Seth dangled the cleaver in front of the man’s face. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, David. Many men have tried to reason for their lives and not one has walked away. I don’t give a rat’s ass what you’ve done in the past or who you are. I don’t care if you have a wife and child waiting for you at home. I’m here to do a j
ob and I’ve wasted time already.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “You’re stalling, David.”

  “I wanted to know.” A tear formed in the corner of David’s eye and rolled down his cheek. “A man’s family is all he has.”

  Seth rolled his eyes. “I’m sick of playing this cat-and-mouse game. Time’s up.” He fired one shot into David’s head. David’s skull exploded upon impact, splattering bone fragments and brain matter across the concrete like a child’s painting. The stench of gunpowder formed a thick cloud in the air.

  Seth paused for a moment, neutralized by an odd feeling of regret. He’d been an assassin for so many years that he was immune to the tears, begging, and sob stories of his targets. What made David’s death different? Was he becoming soft?

  He curled his lip at the thought and dropped to one knee beside David’s corpse. He yanked the man’s left hand out from underneath his body and pressed it against the ground. With his hog cleaver, he cut off the index finger with a satisfying crunch. Wordlessly, he bagged the digit and slipped it into his pocket.

  For every death, an agent must bring back a finger to prove the assassination was successful. Cheating wasn’t so easy. When acquired by the agency, a target’s fingerprints were filed before being sent out to a location. If they returned back to base without it or the wrong finger, payment was denied and the agent eliminated.

  His reward was calculated by how much the target was worth in life. The richer, the better. Celebrities, drug dealers, war lords, and even presidents all came with a hefty paycheck. Seth wouldn’t know David’s value until he returned to New York. His last target, a corrupt Senator, had helped purchase his latest set of wheels, a Phoenix Manu, a rare concept car he bought direct from the designer. Embossed with cherry-red paint, a crisp leather interior, and two-hundred fifty pounds of torque, his Manu meant more to him than most humans.

  Seth withdrew a handkerchief and wiped the cleaver blade clean. He gazed at David’s body and pushed down the feeling of self-disgust. There was no time to reflect, he had to get back to the office. He didn't want people looking for him.

  The wind rattling the windows subsided as he readied himself to leave. David’s body would stay where it lay, a meal for a fox or murder of crows. He didn’t care what happened to it. Some agents hired contractors to dispose of the bodies, and he believed once you die, your body should return to the Earth, bone and flesh where it belonged.

  “See you later, Davo,” Seth quipped as he pulled out his cell phone. “We shall meet again one day.” He punched in a number and waited for the call to be answered. After seven rings, it was picked up.

  “Yeah, what do you want?” a deep voice drawled.

  Seth could hear heavy metal playing in the background. A lupine smile crossed his face. “Come on, Dawson. I expect a little more enthusiasm from you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Who’ve you got playing there? ‘Slash Me’ or ‘Satan’s Angels’?”

  Dawson Degan sighed heavily into the mouthpiece. “Langdon, I’m on the end of a double shift so cut the time wasting, all right? Has your target been eliminated or not?”

  “Yeah, he’s lying in a pool of blood as we speak.”

  “Did you acquire the finger for identification?”

  It was Seth’s turn to let out a frustrated breath. “Yes, I did. Can I go now? There’s an owl in the trusses that has a hard-on for me.”

  ***

  New York, Haroun Agency

  Two Days Later

  Seth ran a hand through his ink-black hair and patiently waited in line with other agents. Sweat pearled down his back and there was an unmistakable stench of body odor and stale cigarettes in the air. Humming a tune, he squinted into the scalp of the guy in front of him. Minuscule lice jumped strand to strand, hiding in the tangles of blond hair. He curled his lip in repulsion and stepped back, knocking into the man behind him.

  “Oh sorry, buddy.”

  “Seth, is that you?”

  Jack Winchester’s face was as red and round as a baboon’s ass—a telltale sign of his burgeoning drug use. Seth tried to hide the shock on his face as the men embraced.

  “Did you come through the portal?” Jack asked, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. The agency, despite pulling in millions of credits per year still couldn’t afford decent air conditioning.

  “Yeah, I was in Oklahoma on Monday. I just got back from two days off.”

  “Who’s your admin officer?” Jack asked. “I’ve got Wendy Puckling. She’s a real pain in my ass. I was up all night catching up on paperwork.”

  “Mine’s Dawson.” Seth peered into the office and waved at the man in question sitting behind a desk, a cell phone attached to his ear. The man spotted him, rolled his eyes, and turned his back, continuing the call. “We have a love/hate relationship.”

  “Who was your target this time?”

  Seth noticed Jack’s hands were shaking. “You know names aren’t disclosed. However, mine was quite forthcoming.”

  “Do tell.”

  “What do you know about David Bloom?”

  “He is—or was—running an arms smuggling outfit near Brooklyn. He supplied most of the weapons to the rebels in Africa and the Middle East. He made a good profit off it too. Genocide and terrorism are so rife that the American government refuses to help.”

  The line shifted forward. Seth couldn’t shake the image of Bloom cowering in a ball, begging for his life. That didn’t seem like an act of a master criminal. “Really? He seemed like a pussy to me.”

  “You spoke to him?” Jack’s eyebrows rose and disappeared into the folds of skin on his forehead. “It’s against company policy, Seth.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “What did he say? Did he reveal anything?”

  “No, just told me to think of his wife and kid back home.”

  “I know his daughter Terra is pretty active in people’s rights and charity. She must not know of her dad’s business.”

  Seth gave a half laugh. “Well, I must be the only person in New York who didn't know they were related. She must be ashamed of her father, that’s why Terra’s going in the opposite direction.”

  A low humming noise sounded behind them, and a man half covered in blood stepped out from a doorway. An AV light that was positioned on the ceiling scanned him in a teardrop shape of blue, highlighting prominent bloodstains on his arms and torso. He held a baggie carrying several fingers.

  When he saw Seth and Jack staring he said, “The other guys lost.”

  The line shifted forward. They were next to register their kill.

  “They can’t say what we do is cleansing,” Jack said, stealing another glance at the bloody man. “His target was probably a mobster or something. They always go down fighting. We do a dangerous job. You never know what may lie on the other side of that portal.”

  Seth pressed a hand against his jacket and felt the outline of David’s finger. He’d been a hit man for ten years and had many close calls to count. His body was a canvas of old scars and recent cuts and bruises. He travelled to and from different time zones around the world with one goal: to kill a target. Locations were randomized and designed to confuse local police. How could a senator from the United States end up in Laos with no record of ever leaving the country?

  Targets ranged from rogue citizens, corrupt government officials, drug dealers, rapists, child molesters, and murderers. The agency had been created to eliminate the world’s worst from society, an unorthodox way to cleanse the globe, but it came with a price.

  “Do you have any Clandestine?” Jack asked in Seth’s ear. The drug had been illegal in New York for seven years, though the strict laws on distribution didn’t stop the drug dealers selling the rare metal in large bulk. The demand was too great.

  “No, I don’t. I thought you were going to rehab. What happened?”

  “I fell off the horse,” Jack said.

  “I can see that,” Seth quipped. “Yo
ur whole face is red like a tomato. That’s one of the side effects of the drug, you know.”

  “I just need one more hit,” Jack pleaded. “I know you had some.”

  Seth recalled buying a gram of Clandestine a few months ago in Rome. He shot up in some dirty alley, injecting the liquidized metal into his arm. The high had lasted a week.

  “I don’t anymore. You used it last week, remember? You woke me up at 3 a.m. begging for it. You practically broke my door down.”

  Jack’s cheeks blushed pink. “Oh, I forgot about that. The need for my next hit is so excruciating I can’t function.”

  “Go see someone, Jack,” Seth ordered. “You’re in no condition to go clean by yourself.”

  He stepped up to the office window and scanned his wrist into a matchbox-sized reader. A holographic image of his face flashed into view with a summary of his medical records and latest kills.

  Dawson appeared at the window with a look of sheer boredom. “Has your tracker been damaged in any way recently, Langdon?”

  Seth shook his head and withdrew the icy baggie from his pocket. “I don’t cut myself if that’s what you mean.”

  Dawson rolled his eyes. “You’re a regular comedian. The agency requires agents to have their trackers replaced after ten years, if not already damaged. Your time’s up.”

  Seth ignored the unsettling grin that spread across Dawson’s face. He imagined Dawson would get his jollies off administering the new tracker. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

  “I’ll get mine done next week, I promise. Got a busy schedule ahead this week.”

  “All right, remember it’s due. I won’t be so nice when Spencer orders you to see me.” Dawson pointed to a device on the table behind him. It was shaped like a gun, with a .44 inch needle designed to inject the tracker chip deep into the flesh. Seth bit his lip and thumbed the scar on his wrist left behind from his original injection. The day could wait until he retired.