by Alex Howell
“Can you come look at this, sir?” Mason said. “I’m sorry. The elevator did sound a little funky on the way up. Maybe something with its processing is funky.”
“Hold on,” the guard said, rolling his eyes and standing up. “Jesus, damn thing seems to break every other day.”
Perfect.
Mason stepped to the side, presumably to give the man space. The man moved forward, looking at the buttons, and turned his back to Mason. He put him in a rear-naked choke.
Seconds later, the man had drifted off into his afternoon nap. Mason gently let him down, not intent on killing a fellow citizen just yet, grabbed the security guard’s gun, and then turned to Mr. Abdi.
“That will put him out for a few minutes,” Mason said. “But let’s not dillydally, we—”
“I am clear from here,” Mr. Abdi said, much to the surprise of Mason. “You can go downstairs now.”
Mason bit his lip.
“You sure? You don’t—”
“I am fine,” Mr. Abdi said, the tone in his voice obvious.
Realizing he had no choice, Mason nodded and actually pushed the button for the elevator. He hated that he didn’t know what was happening now, but if the man on the other end of the line had known what was going on well enough to tell him what he needed to do with Harnad Abdi, then surely Harnad would put a word in with whomever to tell him what needed to be done.
At least, that was the idea. Mason realized he was operating on a ton of blind faith here, but blind faith was the only thing he had remaining. He had to keep his fingers crossed, hoping that faith continued to reward him long enough to see Clara in person again.
The doors dinged open, and, in a perfectly clear voice, the elevator system welcomed Mason back.
“Now you work,” Mason said, as if playing the part still mattered.
Perhaps it was because he wanted to feel he was doing an actual job of value and not just sitting back, being controlled as he was.
The ride to the first floor continued without problem. As the elevator descended, he fearfully anticipated running into a whole slew of security guards, perhaps suspicious that the only person who had taken an elevator in the last ten minutes had magically gone to the eighth floor. He prepped the guard’s gun in case he had to use it himself.
But when the doors opened and Mason peered out, it was completely empty. For now, he would continue on with his day as if nothing had happened.
He walked out, nodding to the woman behind the desk, and headed for his car. He checked his phone to see if his mystery contact had said anything, but nothing had come through. He locked his phone, mumbling under his breath. What would he do next?
He could just wait, but that felt like a waste of time. He could head back to Baltimore, but if Clara was here in New York City, that was just a waste of traveling expenses. He could…
And that’s when he saw someone sitting in the passenger’s seat.
8
Mason hurried to the car, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the gun. He always kept it hidden from view when not in a potentially dangerous scene, not wanting to stir a violent outcome if at all possible. If, however, all that had happened was some homeless person had found the car unlocked and wanted to get some rest, well, it was an inconvenience, and in an odd way a humorous one, but not a real threat.
But, as Mason had long ago learned, coincidences didn’t happen—it was just a term lazy people used to describe things they didn’t want to investigate. And the fact that some stranger had suddenly just popped into his car, with their back turned to him, minutes after getting Harnad Abdi to where he needed to go, could not have been an accident.
Mason knocked on the door at the figure, who had a blanket over their head. But the figure did not turn, instead making an exaggerated show of pointing them to the driver’s seat. Mason contemplated again hitting the door with more aggression to scare them into turning just enough so he could get an ID on them, but he had a gun, close quarters combat training, and experience fighting in cars. The odds that this person did…
I need to stop calculating odds and just go with what I know works.
For Clara.
He moved to the other side, moving very slowly, his hand by his gun at all times. He looked inside and saw the figure looking down. Trying to hide from me.
Or from prying eyes.
Mason opened the car and moved with aggression, putting his hand on the figure’s throat. A yip came—the sound of a woman’s voice—but, at this point, Mason wanted answers, not feelings of guilt.
“Got a lot of nerve getting in my car and trying to…”
Then the person looked up. Mason’s voice trailed off when he saw the face. The girl smiled knowingly as she gently put her hand on Mason’s hand, relieving the pressure on her neck.
“Is that how you greet an old friend? I’d hate to think of what relatives do with that kind of a handshake.”
Mason pulled his hand back, stunned at what he saw—the only female SEAL that he had ever known, Tessa Rogers. Tessa kept the hood over her head, but she smiled at him and finally looked him in the eye.
Tessa Rogers had operated in a different platoon than him, but one critical mission in Iraq, she had gotten pinned down, two other SEALs killed, and with her last moments seemingly reduced to as many terrorists as possible. Mason, a couple hundred yards away, noticed this. He daringly had sprinted in, taking everyone down, narrowly missing fire that could have dropped him with ease. He had hoisted Tessa over his back, gotten her to safety, and taken her back to base.
It was there that she made a pact that whenever he needed her help, he just had to call her. No matter what the circumstances were, she could help. Mason had never seen her again, but the sincerity of her words and the fact that no one else had ever made a promise as strongly as she had stuck out in his mind.
And, thank heavens, she had come through on her promise. She had shown up when he needed her most.
Now the question was, how many skills had she picked up since that could help?
“I heard you called?”
“What are you… how are you… what? What are you doing—”
Mason cut himself off as soon as he started the questions, realizing the stupidity of it and the lack of necessity for it.
“You already forgot you called Hawkeye?” she said with something of a wicked smirk. “I really hope you didn’t forget the rest of your training.”
“I’m not senile, just rusty,” Mason said.
“Uh huh,” Tessa said, her smile making her either oblivious to the stakes at play or just completely unfazed by them. Mason wasn’t sure which one would have impressed him more, but either way, she was dragged in now.
“Enough chit chat,” Mason grumbled. “What does the eye of the hawk see?”
“I hope your skills are better than your jokes,” she said, pulling some papers out from underneath her hoodie. “Because right now, we have problems.”
That doesn’t sound good.
Also… how does she know we have problems?
“You know that they have your daughter. I know that they have your daughter. The problem is, even with my back channels and my connections, I don’t know who ‘they’ are.”
“Wait, back up,” Mason said. “How… how do you know what’s going on with me?”
“You really want to know?” Tessa said.
Mason’s eyes went wide, letting his facial expression answer the question more than anything he could say.
“Your T-101 recorded what happened, both in and out of your car. You went incognito, but even that isn’t foolproof. And, also, once you called me, I was able to hack into your phone and listen to your previous phone calls.”
“Well ain’t that just a delight.”
As Mason wasn’t a hacker, the degree to which his devices gave information away terrified him. It left him paranoid enough that he took the Luddite approach whenever possible, opting for things he could control instead of handing
tasks off to something else.
And this was only reinforcing that notion and those thoughts.
“Don’t worry,” Tessa said. “Whoever you’re dealing with is good, but they’re not as good as me. Anyways, I’m still trying to figure out who your enemy is. They have the advantage of being first on stage, which means they set everything up how they want. I can figure it out, but it’ll take time.”
Mason stared slackjawed at Tessa.
“I thought you were just a Navy SEAL.”
“And the public thinks you’re just an insurance salesman who used to serve,” she said. “Guess we both have our covers, hmm? You want me to take you around Manhattan for cover?”
“Damn, did I just call you so I could be your tour guide?”
Mason regretted the question, though, as they were falling away from the whole point of her being around in the first place.
“Trust me, dear, there are a lot more eligible bachelors who are my type than you. No, Mason, I can help. You know I can. But whoever did this covered their tracks well. They know exactly what they’re doing, they can throw us off their tracks quite well, and right now, we’re flying blind.”
“OK, and how long until you can figure things out?”
Tessa’s immediate facial reaction gave no hope to Mason.
“If you get them on a call, I can trace it, but that’ll take time. Right now, I’m searching for info on Mr. Abdi, but he seems to have bribed Google for how little there is out there on him.”
“My daughter?”
“The feed you saw, I didn’t see any reason to think it wasn’t live. I would assume she’s as safe as that feed showed her. Although I wouldn’t push my luck.”
You don’t say.
“So what do we do?” Mason said.
Tessa sighed.
“The only thing we can do,” she said. “Follow their orders and let them reveal more of themselves. The more that you have to do for them, the more that we can figure out.”
The puppet continues to have his strings pulled. I continue to get sucked into this little world of running errands for terrrorists.
Don’t got much choice.
“Not the most ideal situation, but we’ll make the most of it.”
“Indeed,” Tessa said, her faint smile still remaining.
Instead of being annoyed by the seemingly inappropriate grin, though, Mason found it strange to feel so invigorated by Tessa’s presence. He was never the type to crack jokes in a mission, and yet, suddenly, here he was, making puns and word play. Though Mason had obviously admired Tessa’s courage on that one particular mission, he was serious with Bree at the time and she had mentioned that she was married to some man, and the two believed in loyalty above all else as SEALs.
But now…
Worry about that later.
“What do you know about them?” Tessa asked. “Just so I can see if I have everything covered?”
“They’re calling me from a blocked number,” Mason said, becoming curt and to the point. “They have Clara. She’s tied up somewhere with tape over her mouth. There’s live footage of her as you said. They had me come here to free someone named Harnad Abdi from customs and bring them here. And that’s… pretty much it.”
“And who did—”
Before Tessa could finish her question, though, his phone rang again. Mason hurriedly picked it up and looked down to see the caller ID blocked. He bit his lip. He knew now that this mission went beyond being someone’s Uber driver, which wasn’t that big of a surprise, but it was oddly reassuring—it let him know that they would still be keeping his daughter alive, so long as they had to give him tasks to do.
Tessa gave him the OK to answer the call, opening up a tablet and running her fingers over it. Mason pressed answer and held it to his ear.
“I see you managed to get Harnad Abdi to his destination,” the voice said. “Very good, Mason. A SEAL never forgets his skills, even after all these years.”
“What do you want now?”
The voice cackled, and Mason took note now that it sounded like an older man, like someone who had just retired from business and preferred to speak at a pace that matched the morning golf that he played. Voice identification was never going to get anywhere, but he more than trusted Tessa to not rely on that.
“While it is good that Harnad has reached his destination, there are still several people inside who could prevent him from completing his mission if they do not leave the building. We need to remove them. The good news is, we have made it quite easy for you.”
Mason always knew “good news” from the enemy usually meant bad news for him or a serious ethical question he wasn’t going to get around so easily. He gulped nervously as he considered the various possibilities.
“I’m not killing anyone I don’t have to,” Mason said.
“Oh, don’t worry. If people do as they’re told, no one will die.”
That’s hardly reassuring. In fact, this seems like a good way to say that people will die.
“Do you see the brown paper bag, looking a bit crumpled, next to the trash can outside? Almost as if someone smashed it up and tried to throw it but missed?”
Mason put a finger up for Tessa’s sake, got out of the car, and moved back to where he came. Sure enough, he saw it—but he distinctly remembered such a bag not being there before. Whoever is calling me is close. Or they have agents close by. Which means they have to know that Tessa is here with me.
Which means we might be blown. Or…
If I can grab one of them…
Or maybe my memory just sucks. I didn’t exactly look closely at that trash can for more stuff.
“Yes,” Mason said.
“Open the contents,” the man said.
Mason looked inside and saw a closed vial, seemingly empty and without liquid, but with the label H1P4. A virus of some kind. Well…
Damn.
“How you clear the building, frankly, is up to you. We have only cared about results, Mason, provided they happen within a reasonable time, and this remains true even now. But this is your next objective. Clear the building.”
“How—”
But the line went dead. Mason cursed as he took the vial back to the car. He knew if he was being watched that the enemy would know of the presence of Tessa, but, at this point, he didn’t much care. He needed whatever support he could get, and until they actively told him to stop using her, he wasn’t going to.
“Do you know what this is?” Mason said, handing her the bag.
After Tessa pulled it out, she did the one thing that Mason wished she hadn’t.
She gulped nervously.
9
“H1P4,” Tessa said, reading the label, as if in disbelief.
A harsh silence fell over the car. Mason knew Tessa was thinking about all the consequences, and it didn’t sound like it was going to be a pleasant one for anyone—except those far away who needed the building evacuated.
“I’m going to assume it’s not something that’s a vaccine,” Mason said.
“No, quite the opposite,” she said. “It’s essentially a quick-acting virus like tear gas, utilizing carbon monoxide and other virulent strains to first cripple someone’s cardiovascular system and then make them violently ill. The one odd thing, though, is that it is going to trigger a carbon monoxide alarm.”
“Yeah, they said they wanted the building cleared,” Mason grumbled. “I suppose a clear building with a virus released is going to cause less problems than an infested building with a bunch of dead bodies.
“Huh,” Tessa said, although her face quickly registered understanding. “They gave it to you because the alarm would sound for a chemical weapon. Don’t fool yourself, though, Mason. This isn’t like some high school kid pulling the fire alarm to get out of math class.”
“I know. It’s a virus, so it’ll make people sick.”
“Much more than just your flu,” Tessa said ominously. “It was used in the war in Ghana a few y
ears ago. Killed a quarter of those within a few hundred yards.”
“Damnit!” Mason said sternly, doing his best not to yell.
So much for not wanting to kill. So much for not taking lives in this mission.
The momentary pause and frustration was one of, once again, ideal circumstances being traded for reality than some ethical line of Mason’s being crossed. In the end, if it came down to it, he was willing to kill for his daughter.
But that didn’t mean that it was a bridge he wanted to cross. He could kill the enemy without blinking, but secretaries and security guards just doing their job for a good cause? That felt… it felt downright fratricide to have to kill Americans doing their jobs.
It felt like it went against the very code and the very oath Mason had sworn, which was to protect his country at all costs, both from threats outside and within the borders. There was an overt threat whose location had not been determined yet—and, because of that, Mason was actually doing the opposite of his oath. He was doing all he could to hurt his country at all costs, all because of his daughter.
But if that realization was supposed to prompt a crisis of faith of some kind in the mission itself, it failed. Mason had always thought it was an irrelevant question to ask “family or country?” At that moment, the answer steered toward “family” without much swerving or looking back.
“Fine. We’ll go with what we have,” Mason said once he’d calmed himself. “What other way do we have? Do you have any intel on the building?”
“A place like this? Government-type office? Good news is the marvel of automation means there are fewer people than before. But fewer just means there might be about a dozen or so instead of a few dozen. Not like you have to evacuate Secretary Sue downstairs and then call it a day.”
“A dozen too many,” Mason growled. “Hell, even one is too many. Can we go through and take them out one by one?”
