by Rawlin Cash
It was the autopsies. He wasn’t surprised they’d come back. He’d read them all before, and they’d confirmed the version of events he’d seen in the green files.
He opened the first and immediately realized it was not the same as what he’d read before. The version he’d read said the operative in question had killed himself. This file, complete with photos, video footage, and audio recordings from the coroner and his staff, showed that the operative had been executed by gunshot at point blank range to the back of the head.
Hunter read the other six autopsies, one after the other.
After the last, he continued to stare at the screen.
He was no doctor, but he was pretty sure that seven men, kneeling in a row next to each other on the concrete floor of a CIA black site, their wrists tied behind their backs and bullet holes in their heads, was not what your typical suicide looked like.
Five
President Jeremiah Eugene Jackson campaigned on a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy that was pro-military, pro-Israel, and pro-nuclear. In the seven years since his election, he hadn’t disappointed his supporters. He heavily increased the budgets of the Pentagon, the NSA, and the CIA. He grew US nuclear stockpiles to Cold War levels and withdrew from a number of international non-proliferation treaties. He increased US troop commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and launched new covert operations in all three theaters. He supported the Israelis over Palestine and the Saudis over Yemen. In the Far East, he increased arms sales and defensive cooperation with Japan and South Korea and beefed up the US fleet in the South China Sea. He built a massive naval base in Taiwan, enraging the Chinese. He argued for pre-emptive strikes in North Korea and Iran and stationed naval forces off the Strait of Hormuz and the North Korean coast. He decreased contributions to the UN and NATO and invested heavily in existing missile defense programs, antagonizing the Russians and threatening the efficacy of their nuclear deterrent.
Most dramatically, when the Mexican government proved incapable of containing the Sinaloan cartel, he ordered US ground troops across the southern border and occupied the state of Sinaloa and parts of Chihuahua and Sonora.
His critics thought he wouldn’t survive the Mexican Crisis, which saw more US civilian casualties than any incident since the Civil War, the media had been full of talk of impeachment, but he’d come through the crisis intact.
It was the day of his final State of the Union Address and the subject preoccupying his mind was not impeachment, or next year’s election, or the economy, or even national security.
Today, he cared about one thing.
Legacy.
Jackson understood all too well that for a president to be remembered, to make any kind of meaningful or enduring mark on history, he had to have a single, signature achievement. He had to accomplish one thing, one big thing, that would define his presidency, embody his legacy, and leave his mark on future generations.
He had one year left in office and today was the day he would announce his landmark policy. Today was the day that all branches of government would single-mindedly start pursuing it. Today was the day he would present to congress and the American people, what he, as a president, after seven years of rule, really stood for.
It was a bright, January morning and like he did every other day, he rose at five AM and went to the gym on the lower level of the residence. He spent thirty minutes on the rowing machine watching cable news, fifteen minutes in the sauna looking over the newspapers, and five minutes under a cold shower.
When he got back upstairs, his wife Emily was up, the curtains were drawn, and breakfast was waiting on a room service cart.
“Coffee?” his wife said, pouring two cups from a silver service that had been a gift to John F. Kennedy from the Governor General of Canada.
He smiled at her and picked up the copy of the Post that had been brought with breakfast. Sitting on the bed, he spread it open while his wife put butter and marmalade on some toast.
“Don’t let that get to you,” she said, handing him the toast.
He took a bite. He’d always had a sweet tooth.
“This cunt,” he said. “She’s a fucking cunt.”
“Jeremiah,” Emily said.
“How does she know what I’m going to say? One of those fucking writers is a snitch.”
“You’re nervous.”
He put the newspaper down.
The front page was covered with an article by one of his fiercest critics, a journalist from the Washington Post named Megyn Price. She’d opposed every one of his policies since entering office. Every military move, every policy initiative, every public utterance, she’d ripped them all to shreds.
She was originally from California and was a close friend to two of his other arch-critics, the Californian congresswoman and Speaker of the House, Jennifer Blackmore, and the President of the Senate, Meredith Brooks.
Between the three of them, they’d have him henpecked to death if he let his guard down.
“I need congress to approve this,” he said.
“And Jennifer and Meredith have said they will.”
He nodded. He knew not to trust the word of a politician until the bill was passed and the ink was dry. Getting their support had been a huge achievement. Both parties, finally on the same page.
He had Jeff Hale to thank for that. It wasn’t very many presidents who could say their CIA Director had been a political asset. Jackson still wasn’t certain how Hale had managed to get congress on board. When he asked, Hale told him he didn’t want to know, and Jackson took him at his word.
He looked at the newspaper again and his wife said, “You must have known Megyn would oppose you.”
He nodded. “I’d hoped having Blackmore and the Merry Widow on board would have softened her tone.”
He finished his toast and got dressed. He kissed Emily on his way out and she straightened his tie.
“You’ll come get me?” she said.
He nodded. The speech was scheduled for nine PM.
“We’re leaving at eight,” he said. “I’ll see you for dinner before.”
Aides were waiting in the corridor and they escorted him to the Oval Office where the vice president, Gary Walker, was already waiting with the latest version of the speech.
“Fresh off the press?” Jackson said, taking the speech.
Walker was a former senator from Montana who walked and talked like a cowboy.
He followed the president into the Oval Office and took a seat on one of the sofas in the center of the room.
Jackson watched him swing his boots onto the table and lean back like he was in his own living room.
“You comfortable?” he said.
“Relax,” Walker said. “We’ve got this. They’re going to eat it up.”
“They’re going to eat something up,” the president said.
“I’ve read it through, Jerry.”
“And you’re happy with it?”
“Looks like what we asked for.”
The president sat at his desk and read it. Start to finish, it was seven pages.
“Look at all these clichés,” he said when he was done. “I’ve never been more determined to protect our borders than I am right now? National security has been the single most important objective of my presidency? Safeguarding the sky over our heads?”
Walker sighed. They’d gone through at least fifteen revisions over the last week. It was so revised it was getting hard to remember what they were trying to say.
“There’s only so many ways to say you’re going to protect the nation,” he said.
“Sky over our heads? Fuck.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Do you know of any other place the sky could be, Gary?”
Gary sighed and struck a line through the sentence.
“I want this fucking thing to make their jaws drop, Gary.”
“I don’t know if that’s a realistic goal for a State of the Union address. It�
�s not like you can throw in a car chase.”
“This is my legacy. This is the thing they’ll remember me for. Remember us both for.”
Walker nodded. He uncrossed his legs and got up to pour two cups of coffee as the president went to the door and called for the speech writers to come in. They were waiting in the wings, already working on yet another draft.
They filed in like school kids, three women in their twenties and two men in their thirties.
The president looked at them, trying to guess which of them had leaked the speech to Megyn Price.
“You know this has to be perfect,” he said after a suitable pause. “We’ve still got a few hours and I want more from it. The basics are fine, the facts are fine, but let’s put some fucking artistry in it. Whatever happened to ‘I have a dream’? ‘Four score and seventy?’ ‘Freedom and liberty for all?’ I want that shit.”
“Four score and seven,” one of the speech writers said.
“What’s that?” the president said.
“It’s four score and seven,” the man said. “You said seventy.”
“Fuck you,” the president said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Fuck all of you. This is my fucking legacy. I want to at least try for something big. Can’t we give them a show? Can’t we give them something to quote? Something to put down to posterity, even if it’s only a wikipedia article?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give me something memorable. Let’s give them a show. Let’s make this speech,” he waved his hand, searching for the word, “epic.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And take out all this crap about thanking contractors. This Boeing part. They got paid for their work. So did Lockheed and Raytheon. Let’s focus on the big picture, the grandeur, the spectacle.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re putting on a show here. Like it or not, that’s what we’re doing.”
“We’ll get right on it, sir,” the senior writer said.
“Every president gets one thing,” he said as they backed out of the room. “When I say Woodrow Wilson, when I say Franklin D. Roosevelt, you kids know what those men stood for. Now make sure kids fifty years from now know what the fuck I stood for.”
“Yes, sir,” they said.
Walker was grinning. When the door closed, he patted the sofa next to him.
“Come on over here,” he said. “Lets get you some cream and sugar in that coffee.”
The president looked at the cup that was in his hand. He’d spilled so much the saucer was full.
He would have asked Walker who he thought leaked the speech, but he wasn’t sure it wasn’t him.
“Get your fucking feet off my table,” he said.
Six
Hunter hashed the autopsy files using a SHA-3, 512 bit encryption algorithm. Unlike previous generations, this algorithm had not been designed by the NSA. As far as anyone knew, it was immune to both collision and length extension attacks. A brute force attack would take thousands of years, even with the NSA’s computational ability.
Without the thirty-two character key, the files would never be accessible by anyone.
He sent the files to Fawn Aspen at Langley but did not send her the key.
After sending the file, he formatted the laptop and cell phone.
On his way out of Nogales, he pulled over and lit a fire in a municipal garbage can. He burned the cell and laptop and watched the fire until there was nothing left of the electronics.
A homeless man came over to watch the fire and they stood together.
“Hace calor,” the man said.
Hunter nodded.
There was a fishing village south of Puerto Peñasco where he’d rented a house on the beach. It was thirty miles from the US border post at Lukeville, Arizona, but as a precaution he avoided using that crossing.
When he got to the house, the child was waiting for him on the porch. The woman he’d hired to watch her was in the doorway.
Hunter waved.
“Jack,” the child called out, running toward him.
She was seven years old. He’d taken her from her grandmother’s house a few months earlier after her mother and grandmother had been killed. He still didn’t know why he did it or what he was supposed to do with her.
“Niña,” he said, letting her hang on his arm as he pulled her up the steps of the porch.
She had refused to tell him her name, and although he knew it, he’d taken to calling her Niña. He figured if she wanted him to know her name, she’d tell him.
The woman, a local villager in her sixties named Antonia, cooked them fish for dinner. After dinner, he and the girl walked Antonia to her house in the village. He took a detour on the way back so they could pass the elementary school.
The little girl shook her head when they got to it.
It was a small school, devoid of life now but Hunter had seen the kids playing there during the daytime.
“It’s a good place,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“There’s lots of kids there. Little girls like you. They have teachers who look after them.”
She pulled his arm and they walked on.
When Hunter first met the girl, he’d been at a point in his life where the thought of stepping in front of a bullet was more appealing than living. He’d been in Sinaloa hunting the cartel leader and there was no shortage of men who’d pull the trigger for him.
All he needed to do was let it happen.
Having the child gave him the semblance of a reason to live. It gave him a reason to come home at night, to stay off the grid, to get a home and hire Antonia.
But he knew he was being selfish. He wasn’t her father. Being with him was a liability for her. She deserved better than to be his reason to get up in the morning.
She deserved a family.
She deserved life.
They walked past a decrepit little store and he let her go inside and pick out an ice cream from the freezer. He gave her money and she paid. When she came back with the change he sent her back in and told her to tell the man to keep it.
He lay next to her until she fell asleep and then he went to his room, next to hers, and left both doors open. She had nightmares almost every night.
They both did.
Hunter avoided thinking about the autopsies but when he slept there was nothing he could do. The dream kept coming, and it was because of the dream that he knew the autopsies were true.
In his dream he saw Jeff Hale. Hale had been his commanding officer, the man who’d recruited him into Mantis, the Director of Paramilitary Black-Ops at the CIA.
It was the same dream every night.
Hale handed him a mission file and on the cover was written the word ‘Blackstone’.
Hunter thought the scene took place in Kabul, at a black site inside the city that he knew well. He knew there were memories there he’d been forced to forget. He knew there was a mission called Blackstone that had been wiped from his memory.
And he knew Jeff Hale had been there.
He woke up drenched in sweat.
The dream scared him. It wasn’t the details, which were so fuzzy as to be almost incomprehensible, but the fact that he knew there were demons lurking there, under the surface, and he couldn’t figure out a way to get to them.
He knew he’d done something bad, something that went against his nature, and that the only reason he was still alive was because he couldn’t remember what it was.
An assassin’s job was dangerous. Everyone knew that. But in Hunter’s experience, the danger came from yourself. It came from going off the deep end. From getting lost in the darkness. From offing yourself in a rented room in a strange city with a length of wire or a bullet to the temple.
But not tonight.
The girl deserved better than that.
He got out of bed and checked on her. She was tossing and turning in her own world within a world and he put his hand on her until she calm
ed. Then he went to the kitchen for a glass of water. He sat at the counter and watched the ocean as he drank it. The waves lapped on the beach, visible in the moonlight. He remembered the cigars he’d bought at the border and went to the car to get them. Then he went out onto the sand and let the waves lap over his feet while he smoked.
Seven
The Saudi was preparing the gun when his phone rang. He was surprised. It was the embassy. Those idiots should have known better. He’d ordered absolutely no communication. If anything went wrong, the embassy needed to be able to disavow him completely.
He ignored the call and let it time out but it immediately started again.
“What are you doing, idiot?” he said. “You’re not supposed to call me.”
He’d expected to hear the raspy voice of the embassy lackey, the man he did most of his communication through, but instead it was a woman’s voice. “Please hold for the ambassador.”
The ambassador? That wasn’t normal. The line wasn’t even secure.
“Jamal Al-Wahad,” the ambassador said.
“Excellency,” Jamal said.
He purposely left out the ambassador’s full name, Adel bin Faisal bin Salman al Saud. The man was the King’s cousin and a stickler for formalities, but Jamal was in no mood to flatter him.
“I’ve got a job for you,” the ambassador said.
Jamal wanted to swear. They’d been planning this day for months. Everything down to the last detail had been timed. This wasn’t part of the plan.
“You know I have my orders directly from the Crown Prince,” Jamal said.
“Now you’ve got new orders.”
“New orders?”
He felt like smashing the phone against the table. In front of him was, as far as he or anyone in the Saudi government knew, the most advanced sniper system in the world. It was a full generation ahead of anything the American military had access to.
What he was about to do would rock the American political system to its core.
