The Absolver: Rome (Saint Michael Thriller Series Book 1)

by Gavin Reese

  “You know what we’re doing here, even though I’ve never spelled it out for you,” John impatiently countered. “That what you need? Do I gotta hold your hand and help you sound out all the big words, or can you admit that you figured it out all on your own and you’re okay with it?”

  “I suppose I—”

  “Here’s the thing you need to understand, Andrew. I don’t want robots, and I can’t have psychos that just wanna kill. We’re here to be God’s precision instruments that He uses for a finite and rare purpose. Now, I understand you’ve been a couple places and done a couple things, right?”

  Michael quizzically looked at the man and tried to assess the underlying basis of his question. How much does he really know about me? “Yeah,” he hesitantly responded and slowly nodded his head, “what difference does that make?”

  “I need men that intrinsically, in their hearts and in their minds, that firmly understand the difference between murder and killing, and they’re comfortable with makin’ merciful decisions when necessary. You know much about huntin’ snakes, Andrew?”

  “Not really,” Michael replied, unsure about the correlation.

  “That’s one-a my favorite prey. Hate those sons-a-bitches, but, what’s nice about huntin’ ‘em is that they’ll always do what you want, so long as you bait ‘em right. They’ll only strike at threats if they can’t outrun it, but, if they’re hungry, they’ll go after prey without a second thought. So, whenever you wanna draw a snake outta hidin’, you make it think there’s an easy meal to be had. Turns out the world’s fulla snakes. I don’t want snakes on my team, Andrew, I need snake hunters. You should keep your shit packed, by the way. Real good chance you ain’t gonna be here that much longer.”

  “Why? What’d I fuck up, John,” Michael demanded, now upset at the idea that he deserved Thomas’ unknown fate. “I did everything you wanted, I put up with your miserable ass and your bullshit-psychology antics, and now I’m gettin’ shipped out?! Just like that?!”

  John put his hands atop the chair opposite Michael and leaned forward. When he spoke, his lower, deliberate tone helped keep their conversation private. “That’s what happens after you pass the goddamned program. At this point, I don’t see anyone else washin’ out, so you just gotta learn everything you can and keep your focus.”

  Michael leaned back in his chair and realized how off-guard John’s kindness had found him. “Thanks, John, I—”

  “One thing you need to be aware of. Even though I believe very firmly in the work my graduates are called to complete for God and His children, you’re still overseen by men. Any one of ‘em can be fallible, arrogant, and self-serving, even if they wake up in a red Cossack or a papal tiara.”

  John paused, briefly glanced behind him, and spoke just above a whisper. “We’re all just gravediggers in this cemetery, right? We’re the ones out there, in all manner of weather, doing the ugly work that no one else wants or is willin’ to do. We get our hands dirty because someone has to, and we’re willin’ and able. It’s in the D-N-A of who and what we are. We run into danger because those around us can’t or won’t, because we can’t sit by and watch what happens when danger comes callin’ on those around us.

  “Trouble with gravediggers, though, Andrew, is they know where all the bodies are buried. Eventually, the boss decides he needs a new gravedigger with a shorter memory. I wish it wasn’t so, but I’ve seen it time and again, regardless of what you call the organization, what it calls itself, whatever its bullshit acronym is. Pick any letters of the alphabet you want, as long as it’s run by people, the suits’ll eventually come downstairs lookin’ for the diggers.”

  Michael struggled to process John’s unexpected candor. “Why do you do it then, John, if you’re so certain it’s gonna end the same way every time?”

  “Somebody’s gotta do it, and goddammit, I love the work. It’s what I was meant to do with this life. I can live with everything I’ve done, gladly answer for all of it someday without hesitation. It’s the things I failed to do, the times I let fear get the best of me, those are the things I’m afraid to be judged on. Keep that in mind as you’re out there diggin' holes, Andrew. Make sure you’re not diggin’ one for yourself.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Training Day 180, 0728 hours.

  Rural Compound. Niobrara County, Wyoming.

  Michael sat in his detested plastic chair and flipped through hundreds of pages of notes he’d taken since his first day in John’s classroom. It’s unbelievable what we’ve covered. Gotta be getting close to that B-S in Espionage Arts. In the two months that had passed since the pig slaughter, their training coursework had become much more narrowly focused and detailed. It’s almost like they’re training us to be cops, or anti-cops, but continually re-emphasizing that we’re never to act without fulfilling our moral and Biblical obligations. John & CO covered a ton of material during the first few months, but since then we’ve just been digging deeper into the same recurring subjects and further improving our skills. The only new topics have all been pretty high-speed, low-drag material that almost no one gets to learn. He flipped through the thick notebooks’ tabbed sections and scanned the titles: Recognizing Homemade Improvised Explosive Devices, Dynamic Building Entry Tactics, Shortcomings of Modern Forensic Science, Police Procedures and Investigation Methods, Interrogation Techniques, Border Crossing Processes and Weaknesses, Crime Scene Processing, Evidence Collection, Basic Computer Forensics.

  Michael smirked as he read his favorite course title: Spontaneous Vehicle Acquisition. ‘Grand Theft Auto’ would be a more accurate title. Screwdrivers are still the way to go, it’s just not as easy to hotwire a car as Hollywood makes it look. They’re transforming us all into competent and dangerous professionals. Professional ‘what’ is still T-B-D…

  John expectedly crossed the back threshold at just the appointed time and addressed his five remaining students while still en route to the front of the room. “Before we get started with today’s mystery class, there’s somethin’ I wanted to make absolutely clear from yesterday’s Use of Force class. Y’all can just relax for a few minutes and listen, don’t worry about taking notes.”

  He didn’t start out by calling us ‘shitheads,’ Michael thought. Is that good or bad?

  “Go ahead and take yourself to your goddamned happy place,” John announced, “if you got one, anyway.” He set a stack of papers on one of the long banquet tables and looked back at the students.

  “We agreed that we’re all morally and legally obligated to use only the force that’s reasonably necessary to achieve a just outcome, and it’s gotta be proportionate to the offense of the man we’re tryin’ to subdue. Now, I think we’re all pretty damned clear on using force against a bad man doing bad things. Not gonna rehash that. But, what about the civilian, an interloper, that steps in on the bad man’s behalf? How much force you wanna use against them?’

  Weird. We beat this to death yesterday, Michael thought. “They’re just doing what they think is right, and we can’t explain who we are or what we’re doing, so, for me, I wouldn’t do anything more than threaten them, if that.”

  “Alright,” John replied. “What about security guards?”

  “I would look at them as just another civilian,” Alpha explained, “a bystander.”

  John shrugged. “Okay, but what if they work—”

  BOOM!!

  Reacting purely on instinct, Michael stood and turned around to face the unknown danger behind him. Adrenaline both sped up his actions and dramatically slowed his perception of time as his brain fought to take in and process all the information available to him. In those slow moments that followed, a tall man in a black ski mask and long-sleeved flannel shirt stood just outside the broken wooden door to the classroom. Splintered pieces of wood from the door cast into the room and fell onto the concrete floor as the suspect dropped a large, black-rubber door ram onto the ground. As Michael rushed toward the door, the suspect retrieved a concealed semiauto pi
stol from his front waistband and pointed it into the room. Michael began calculating his odds of success and survival, given the weapon and the distance he had to cover to get to it.

  A second suspect, this one shorter and also clad in flannel and a black ski mask, stepped in front of the first suspect and leveled a shotgun at Michael’s advancing torso. He’s fuckin’ smiling at me!

  Michael knew the shotgun changed the entire dynamic of the fight. With no realistic chance in a head-on confrontation, he moved left toward the nearest stall in search of cover. I’m too far away, I’ll never get there before he shreds my chest! Michael almost made it to the stalls when he heard Suspect Two expertly rack the shotgun.

  chkchk

  No weapon, no cover, Michael thought. I’m dead out here!

  “STOP!! GET DOWN, GET DOWN!!

  Despite his internal rage, Michael rationally knew that any noncompliance at that moment was potential suicide. He begrudgingly did as they commanded. He also glanced back and saw his classmates doing the same. John, still at the front of the room, defiantly stood his ground.

  “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHAT THE HELL DO YOU—”

  “HEADS DOWN OR THE OLD MAN DIES!” The second suspect, the shorter one, stepped farther into the room and pointed the shotgun at John. “EYES CLOSED, HEADS DOWN, EYES CLOSED, HEADS DOWN!! DO IT OR I’LL KILL HIM WHERE HE STANDS!!”

  “You God-damned cowards,” John railed on but made no effort to advance. Michael saw him put his hands all the way up above his head. “Do as he says, boys, don’t get yourselves killed over me! Do as I say, and do it now! Faces down, eyes closed, hands on the back of your heads!”

  Michael had never been so helpless, enraged, and frustrated in his life, but he did as John ordered. There was no reasonable second option. I know what’s coming, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it!

  “How the fuck did you find me, you God-damned fuckin’ weas—”

  BOOM!! chkchk BOOM!!

  The deafening shotgun blasts came in quick succession after the suspect proficiently worked his pump action. Even though Michael expected to hear them, he flinched and turned around in terror as John fell back onto the concrete floor. Keeping his head and face close to the ground, Michael turned back to the door and saw both men back out and run off to his right, toward the driveway. “They’re gone,” he called out to his teammates and scrambled forward toward the door. “Somebody check on John!”

  Determined to see something that would help find John’s killers, Michael just barely exposed himself to look at the driveway with only his left eye. What the fuck, they’re walking and laughing, and there’s no getaway car!

  “End scenario, end scenario,” John unexpectedly called out.

  Michael looked back and saw him standing where he’d just fallen. “Calm the hell down, I’m okay! This was a training exercise! Everybody get back to their seats, right now!”

  Anger replaced all his other emotions as Michael’s adrenaline subsided. He walked back to his overturned chair but didn’t sit down yet. Better be a goddamned good reason for this!

  “This is important,” John slowly explained and brushed dirt off his lower back and the seat of his jeans. “No one else gets to talk but me until I say otherwise. Raise your hand if you actually saw the shots. And I don’t mean witnessed them, I very specifically mean saw them. If you saw the muzzle flashes, I need to know right now.”

  Michael looked around and saw no one raised their hand.

  “Thank you all for doing as I asked, even though I’m sure you wanted to do otherwise.” John cleared his throat and continued. “Right now, before anyone says anything, you’re all gonna sit down and write out a detailed witness statement about everything you saw, heard, thought, and felt during the attack. Write it like you alone are responsible for givin’ cops every last detail they might need to find my killers. You have thirty minutes. And, Alpha, I’m sorry if this creates a problem for you, but you gotta do it in English. Nobody else here polly-voos. Go.”

  Michael exhaled and tried to let his understanding allay his anger. He wants to show how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be. I get the goddamned point, but they went a little overboard here! He set about writing his statements just as soon as his hands stopped shaking, and he finished his last sentence right after John called ‘time.’

  John spent little more than five minutes reviewing all six statements, apparently skimming them for high points and key details. “Came out about like I expected,” he announced and dropped the papers on the banquet table. “Some of y’all heard one shot, some two, one heard three. The number of bad men differed, their clothing differed. One said they were both black, even, in reality, they were white and wore ski masks.

  “Most of you got pretty close to what they said, but nobody got exact quotes. It does seem, though, that you all had the intelligence to understand and do what I said. If you hadn’t, we’d probably have to get your eyes checked to make sure you didn’t have any damage from the flash or powder. Unlikely, but I’d prefer to be safe when we can.”

  Alpha spoke up, and Michael saw he was still upset. “John, what is the purpose and meaning of this, this bullshit, man?!”

  “In my experience, Alpha, I can talk for hours about how terrible eyewitness testimony is. I can show you all manner of data, video footage from surveillance cameras and murder trials, but it’ll never have the same effect. Instead of spending several days trying to get my point through your heads, we’re gonna spend less than an hour on the topic and be done with it. The takeaway for all of you here today is that none of you got it right. No one had the actual events, as they really happened from front to back. I think we can agree that you oughta fare better than the average civilian, and you still failed.

  “Our brains are wired for survival, not for providing testimony,” John explained. “When humans are placed under tremendous and unexpected stress, their truth becomes even more subjective than normal. So, if you find yourself working in investigations, intelligence, anything that might require you to interview, interrogate, or rely on an eyewitness, you’d better make damned sure you never act without first corroborating their statements. I don't care what any court says about relevance or admissibility, we really only care about accuracy. If a witness tells you the sky is blue, you’d better open a window and check, no matter who they are.

  “Remember that truth is relative, subjective, and personal. Eyewitnesses can absolutely believe everything they’re tellin’ you and still be just, plain, wrong. They’re usually not lying, but their truth isn’t consistent with objective facts and evidence. They simply didn’t see it from the right physical or mental perspective. Any further questions on the matter?”

  Michael reluctantly saw John’s point. Despite how bad the experience of the drill was in that moment, it’s hard to overstate its training value. Trading potential trauma for truly internalized understanding. “So, John,” he asked, “was the initial discussion just a set-up for that?”

  “Well, yes and no, but thanks for the transition,” John replied. “We did cover that pretty heavily yesterday, but I got new reason to make sure we cover it again today. If, someday, in the course of carrying out your duties, you’re confronted by law enforcement and they tell you that you’re not free to go, you can’t leave. Doesn’t matter what the country is or what the legal standards are, you’re detained or arrested, I don’t care which. My point is simply this: you will not, under any circumstance, use force against any cop of any country. They won’t have the same concerns about you, especially because you probably won’t be able to explain yourself. It all comes back to Day One Op-sec, right? So, again, you will, not, ever, assault, stab, shoot, harm, or ruffle the bad haircut of anyone that’s raised their right hand and swore an oath to risk their own safety for others. Please try like hell to get away, but you won’t use force to do so.

  “Worse comes to worst,” John surmised, “maybe God changed plans without givin’ you advance notice, and now He
needs you to serve in a prison mission. ¿Preguntas?”

  Gotta be a real problem, Michael thought. Intel officers of all nations eventually have to run into traffic cops or investigators.

  “Moving on,” John concluded, “lemme explain how that’s tied into today’s training exercise. Y’all might recall those two men with flannel and guns that y’all let murder me a little bit ago? Turns out, they’re still outside, and I expect they might have a couple more friends with ‘em by now. Anyone ever heard-a ‘SERE School?’”

  No way this is about to happen, Michael hoped. They’re putting us through prisoner of war training?! I thought he was just fuckin’ with us that day on the driving track! He glanced around and saw a few reluctant, raised hands. Sergio made eye contact with him, and Michael saw in his friend the overwhelming apprehension he personally felt.

  “Good,” John smirked and replied. “Just like the big boy version in the military, the name-a the game is in the title: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. We never know what God’s gonna put before us on any given day, and I prefer training that reflects our reality. So, y’all know everything you need to survive, evade, resist, and escape for the next couple days, ya just gotta figure out how to put it all together. This’ll be the longest and most profound field exercise in my program, so you can rest assured that this is the worst shit I can put you through.

  “The R-O-Es for today. No one leaves my property, ‘cept by bus or body bag. Your Op-For are all cops in the third-world nation of Johnislava, hence their shitty flannel uniforms and piss-poor manners. Recall that you may not, under any circumstance, use force against L-E-Os, not even ones from shitholes like Johnislava. At no time can you reveal your professional affiliation with the Vatican or the Holy See. You may reveal you're Catholic, if you choose, that you're men of faith and God, if you choose, but you will not identify yourself as a priest, no matter what they do. Questions?”