by Cap Daniels
The concussion that followed left me unconscious for almost an hour. When I finally awoke, I was lying facedown on a hospital gurney with the worst headache imaginable. I saw Grey sitting in a chair.
I grunted, “What the hell was that about?”
He looked up, frowning. “Hey, kid. Welcome back. You got one hell of a knot on that noggin’ of yours. Looks like it hurts.”
“You’ve got quite a way with words. You know that, Grey?” I coughed and thought my head would explode. I vowed to never cough again. I could only imagine what agony a sneeze would bring.
Grey rose from his perch and leaned through the doorway. “Hey, doc! The kid’s awake in here.”
He looked back at me then strode out into whatever was beyond the doorway. There was no actual door, but I still couldn’t see out there because of my angle and limited ability to use my eyes for anything other than squinting.
A man came into the room with a stethoscope in one hand and a clipboard in the other. I had a flashback to the day I’d awakened in the hospital in Nebraska, but something told me this hospital wasn’t quite as hospitable.
“Hey, Chase. I’m Doctor Hamilton. You sustained a pretty nasty bump on the back of your head. I stitched it up and shot some films of your skull and ankle. Your skull is fine, but it’s going to hurt for a few days. Your ankle isn’t broken, but it’s pretty badly sprained. I shot it full of cortisone and wrapped it up. It’ll be okay in a few days, too. You were on my agenda for an initial physical exam later in the week, but it looks like you found a way to cause enough trouble to move to the front of the line.”
I was beginning to feel like I’d fallen down the rabbit hole. I was in a makeshift hospital at some sort of training camp somewhere in Virginia where I’d been nearly drowned, taken captive, interrogated in a language I didn’t understand, fought back, escaped, and taken to some maniac’s office where I was attacked again and nearly beaten to death. I couldn’t wait to see what day two was going to bring.
Before I could ask Dr. Hamilton any questions, he was gone and replaced by a guy who was a study in contrasts. From the waist up, he looked like a chemist. He was wearing a short lab coat with at least a dozen pens protruding from the breast pocket. Dangling awkwardly from his lab coat was a name tag that read “Fred.” The chemist look ended at his waistline. He also wore cargo pants, except he must’ve cut them with a blunt pair of scissors. The left leg was about six inches shorter than any shorts should ever be, and the right was oddly diagonal and touching his knee. He wore a pair of tattered leather sandals. He had a pencil in his mouth and one behind each of his ears. Nothing about him made sense. He looked up at me in total surprise, as if he hadn’t expected me to be there. I wanted to laugh, but I was terrified that laughing would hurt worse than coughing. I tried not to stare, but he was like a walking freak show. I just couldn’t look away.
Shaking his head wildly from side to side, he said, “Hi, Mr. Fulton. I’m kind of like in charge here. I’m the psychiatrist, and it’s my job to make sure you aren’t too sane to be here. You see, sane people don’t live long in this line of work, so it’s really important that you be at least a little crazy like the rest of us. From the looks of you, it appears that you’re going to fit right in. Do you have any questions for me?”
I had far more questions than I had time left on Earth to ask, so I opened with the obvious. “What the hell is going on?”
He looked at me in further astonishment, as if I’d asked him the meaning of life. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t know what you mean. You’re here to train to be an operator, aren’t you?”
Did he just say operator?
“Okay, now I’m completely lost. Please tell me what’s going on. I’ve had a bad day, and I really need some answers that make sense.”
“No, your day hasn’t been bad at all,” he said. “You’re doing exceptionally well compared to most of the trainees who show up here. Usually, they spend the first several days being held captive, enduring torture, and being interrogated in Russian. You cut that exercise pretty short. Everyone’s totally impressed. You’re showing signs of being exceptional in every category so far. You’ve demonstrated that you can stay calm when most people panic. You didn’t freak out when the seatbelt wouldn’t release while you were sinking. You displayed exceptional morality by warning your captors that you were going to kill them before you actually did. By the way, you only killed one of them. The other is going to have trouble hearing from one ear for a while, but he’s alive. Sometimes being alive is what’s most important. Oh, and by the way, that morality of yours is something we’re going to have to work on. You can’t be doing that in the field. You’re have to just kill them and not give them a chance to get away, but we’ll deal with that later. You showed masterful environmental awareness by locating the rocks you used as weapons without our training officers recognizing what you were doing. You then held your own against Gunny. Nobody, and I mean nobody, comes out of that office in as good a shape as you. Even he was impressed. You’re going to be one hell of an operator, Mr. Fulton.”
So, what I learned was that what I thought was the worst day of my life was, in Fred’s opinion, not bad at all.
“Okay, slow down. So, you’re telling me I’m doing well?”
“Yes! Yes! Very well, indeed,” he insisted.
There was quite a chasm of misunderstanding between Fred and me. I still had very little idea what I was doing in that place, and he seemed to think I fit right in. I needed to close the gap between our thinking.
“Okay, let’s break this down,” I said. “All I know is that four old guys told me I was going to become some kind of secret agent, and the next thing I knew, I was drowning in that cesspool you people keep calling a lake. I’m a psych student, and I used to be a pretty good baseball player. That’s the limit of what I know. Now, please fill in the rest for me.”
He looked like a confused puppy with his head cocked sideways and his brow wrinkled. He looked down at his clipboard, perhaps for inspiration, or maybe for a delay to gather his thoughts. “Oh my,” he said. “You are out of your element, aren’t you? Here’s how this works. You’ve been recruited to combine a set of natural skills you already possess, with an impressive set of skills you’ll develop over the next several weeks, months, and years, to become a tool used by people you’ll never meet, to accomplish things you’ll never understand, for reasons that are bigger than we lowly servants could ever fathom.”
I wasn’t wise enough to grasp the weight of such a profound statement, but he was more correct than even he knew.
After consulting his trusty clipboard again, he continued. “So, what’s going to happen is that you and I are going to spend some time together. I’m going to poke around in your head and make sure you aren’t going to melt down under the extremes of what you’re going to become. If we make it past that milestone, which I believe we will do very quickly, I’m going to teach you things about the human mind that will terrify and thrill you. I’m going to teach you how to make people believe things that could never be true, and how to manipulate the perception of those around you to create realities that you design. You see, I learned these things from your beloved Dr. Richter. He was my mentor long before you were born, Mr. Fulton. Now you’ll learn those things from me.”
He let his words hang in the air. I was starting to like Fred, but I didn’t know why. I thought I should probably listen more and talk less, but I had so many questions. I just couldn’t be silent any longer.
Assuming it was a good place to start, I asked, “So should I call you Fred or Doctor or what?”
He looked thoroughly puzzled. “Why would you call me Fred?”
I glanced at the dangling name tag pinned to his lab coat. “That’s what your name tag says.”
He grinned. “See how easy it is to manipulate the reality of those around you? I never told you my name. I never suggested that I even had a name. You simply assumed I had a name and that I woul
d wear it on my chest. To you, that imaginary name became your reality. You and I are going to have a lot of fun together.”
9
So Much to Learn
I convinced Fred— I’d never stop calling him Fred—that I was sufficiently insane to survive in his world, and he blessed me with the stroke of his pen and sent me off to become an operator.
I learned that killing an instructor on my first day was not the best move I could’ve made. That seemed to make every other instructor want to kill me, and they did their best, but I prevailed.
In the months following the surgeries to put my hand back together, I’d pushed myself beyond reasonable limits both mentally and physically. Physical therapy was a waste of time. They wanted me to stretch and flex and take my time regaining the use of my hand. I had no patience for such a pitiful pace. I ran a hundred miles a week and spent endless hours in the gym. When I arrived at The Ranch, I was in the best shape of my life, but when I left, I was in the best shape of anyone’s life. I could run almost endlessly without even breathing hard. I could shoot any weapon that had ever been manufactured with more precision than most snipers. I could fight with lethal skill and efficiency. I could change my appearance at will and speak four new languages. I could fly anything with wings or rotors and run any boat that could float. Needless to say, I, along with the plethora of talent at The Ranch, had transformed myself into a very sharp tool.
Fred and I spent countless hours together, learning to untangle the mysteries of the human mind, but more important than the untangling of them, he taught me to weave such intricate webs of deception in the minds of others that there were times when I questioned the reality I created. I learned that people were sheep. They wanted to believe the insane lies that life told them. They were hungry for meaning even if that meaning was ridiculous. I learned to prey on that weakness by using my understanding of psychology like a modern-day alchemist, but instead of turning lead into gold, I could transform perception into reality.
When I wasn’t learning to kill or confuse somebody, I was learning tradecraft. Tradecraft is the art of applying intricate techniques into our operations in the field. I learned to evade surveillance, bypass security systems, pick locks, and other crucial skills that would keep me alive.
I had no way of knowing when my training would officially end and I’d be sent out to accomplish something meaningful. Occasionally, I’d leave The Ranch and interact with real people. Fred called them field trips, but I liked to think of them as vacations from hell. One such field trip would change my life forever.
“Have you ever been to New York, kid?” That was the sound my alarm clock made at four a.m.—or at least I thought it was my alarm clock. As it turned out, it was Dutch.
Dutch was a seasoned operator who occasionally observed my training. He almost never interacted directly with me other than to critique something I’d done or to offer suggestions on how to do something better. I’d learned that he was very good at being invisible. He would show up in post training briefings and give detailed analyses on aspects of the day’s activities. I was always amazed by how he could take in so much information from the world around him, process it, and spit out critiques so efficiently without ever being seen.
I remember running twelve miles, shooting three thousand rounds of ammunition at hundreds of targets one day, and seeing no one other than my trainers, but somehow, Dutch showed up and told me that I’d jerked the trigger instead of squeezing it on my eight hundredth shot of the day when the fly landed on my nose.
“What?” I moaned and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“I said, have you ever been to New York?”
Still wondering what Dutch was doing at my bedside at that hour, I groggily replied, “No, I’ve never been to New York. Why?”
He yanked the cover from my bed and tossed me a backpack. “Let’s go. I’ll brief you on the way.”
I landed on the cold floor, content to be doing anything other than running, shooting, or fighting for a change. I pulled on my t-shirt, cargo pants, and boots, and tried to keep up with Dutch.
In his gorgeous, brand-new BMW 5 Series, we headed north. I was curious about what new hell awaited me in New York. As it turned out, it wasn’t hell at all. It was a real mission.
Dutch asked, “What do you know about horse racing?”
I shook my head and admitted, “Nothing.”
“That’s good,” he said. “That way you don’t have any preconceived notions of what’s going on. Do you know what the Triple Crown is?”
I shook my head.
“The Triple Crown is horse racing’s most coveted prize. Winning the Triple Crown means that a horse wins the Preakness Stakes, the Kentucky Derby, and the Belmont Stakes all in the same year. The last Triple Crown winner was a horse named Affirmed back in seventy-eight.”
Not giving him a chance to continue, I jumped in. “I remember that. I was just a kid, but I remember it being on TV.”
Dutch continued, “So, needless to say, when a horse wins the Triple Crown, he instantly becomes the most valuable animal on the planet. This year, there’s a horse named Silent Storm who is poised to be the next Triple Crown winner. He’s owned by one Dmitri Barkov. Have you ever heard of him?”
I didn’t know if he was asking if I’d ever heard of the horse or the owner, but the answer was the same to both questions. “No, I’ve never heard of him.”
“He’s a bad guy to say the least. Barkov is Russian mafia and former KGB. He’s rumored to have been the most corrupt agent in the history of the KGB. He made his fortune while everyone around him seemed to be begging for vodka and cabbage. Now he owns not only a healthy cut of the Russian black market, but also the horse that’ll probably be the next Triple Crown winner. I don’t know what you know about Russians, but they don’t lose well. They aren’t particularly good sports when it comes to second place.”
“I know how they feel,” I said.
“I thought you might. So, our friend Dmitri, as you might imagine, is particularly opposed to losing, and he has a lot of friends who’ll do almost anything to make sure he keeps winning. At the Preakness three weeks ago, his horse Silent Storm wasn’t the favorite. He was handicapped as number two behind a horse named Breaker’s Folly. Breaker’s Folly placed second at the Kentucky Derby two weeks prior, but was coming on strong when Silent Storm beat him by a nose at the wire. At the Preakness, Breaker’s Folly started strong and was leading for over half the race, but suddenly, the jockey’s right foot slipped from the stirrup, sending him sliding off the horse. With the jockey hanging off his side, Breaker’s Folly slowed down and drifted to the back of the pack.”
“Wow. That sucks for him. I’ve never heard of a jockey falling off.”
Dutch corrected my misunderstanding. “Oh, he didn’t fall off. He just slipped. But why he slipped is what makes the story interesting. The stitching of his boot failed during the race. His boot literally fell apart while he was riding.”
“Okay,” I said. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
Dutch pursed his lips and thought for a moment. “Five hundred thousand dollars is why this matters to you. That’s how much we’re getting paid to make sure that no more boots fall apart.”
Silence filled the car as my brain tried to figure out what half a million dollars had to do with my ability to keep boots from falling apart. “How are we supposed to do that?”
Dutch seemed to expect the question and had an immediate explanation. “It isn’t really as simple as boots. The truth is that the boots weren’t really the issue. The issue was the people who had access to the boots before the race. You see, boots don’t just fall apart—especially not jockeys’ boots. We believe someone was paid handsomely by our friend Dmitri to apply a chemical agent to the stitching of the boots prior to the race. This would deteriorate the stitching to the point that it would give way under the stress of the ride, but not before.”
I was fascinated that espionage exi
sted in the world of horse racing. “What makes you believe it was a chemical? Why couldn’t he have just cut the stitching?”
“Oh, my boy. You have oh-so-much to learn. Had he cut the stitching, that would’ve been blatantly obvious when we inspected the boots afterwards. It had to be something much subtler.”
I sat quietly, considering what Dutch had said. I was still finding it difficult to believe that someone would pay us half a million dollars to keep somebody from sabotaging a horse race. I wondered if all the horses had highly paid teams like us working on their behalf. I chalked it up to people having way too much money.
“So, how do we go about this job of ours?”
“We don’t,” he said. “I do. You’re here to watch, listen, and learn. Trust me. You’ll have nothing productive to add to any of this. You’ll be introduced to several other people who were once just like you—bright-eyed and anxious to save the world, but they learned, as you soon will, that the world can’t be saved. But you may, if you’re lucky, make a small fortune from those people who believe otherwise. Wealthy racehorse owners are among that group of believers, young Chase.”
We stopped for gas, coffee, and doughnuts. I was quite thankful for two of the three. When we left the gas station, Dutch tossed me the key fob. “You drive. After all, it’s your car.”
“What?” I murmured and doughnut crumbs fell from my mouth and I struggled to catch the key fob. “What do you mean it’s my car?”
He laughed at my clumsiness. “I thought you were some big-shot catcher. You look more like a juggler to me. Everyone gets a new car when they finish The Ranch. That one is yours.”
