The Secret Weapon

by Bradley Wright

  Then he heard two more shots, and the phone clattered as it dropped to the floor.

  21

  King’s ear was still ringing from the final two gunshots that blasted through the speaker of his phone. They were much closer than the first two, and his imagination, searching for clues to determine who had shot Mary, couldn’t help but see her lying on the floor in her office and then being executed.

  His chest was heaving. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He paced the room and listened intently to what was going on in Mary’s office, which was almost four thousand miles away. In all his years in combat, of all the dangerous and deadly missions and situations he’d faced as a Navy SEAL then in Spec Ops, this . . . this was the most helpless he had ever felt. For a man who fixes things for a living, King couldn’t bear the thought that this was going on—a friend just shot and probably killed—and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  “Pick up the phone, you coward!” he shouted into the phone. He was panting. Saliva shot from his mouth as he spoke. “Talk to me, you son of a bitch! I know you can hear me!”

  Bentley came bounding down the stairs. “Is everything all right?” When she saw King seething, a wild look in his eyes, she backpedaled right back up the stairs.

  That’s when King heard breathing on the other end of the line.

  A couple of seconds went by, and he was breathing heavily himself, trying to control his rage since he had nowhere to direct it.

  Then a calm came over him.

  He took a deep breath, and his heart rate began to slow. He could feel the negative energy of the person holding the phone, but somehow it brought him focus.

  “I don’t know who you are . . . but I will.” King walked over to the front door and opened it, letting some cool air into the hot room. He was on fire. “And I may not know where you are going to run to . . . but I’ll find you.”

  King’s mind was racing down a rabbit hole. He was seeing the puzzle pieces of the entire situation moving together in front of him. He could feel that this person breathing into the phone, the person who’d likely just murdered the director of the CIA and his friend, Mary Hartsfield, was the same man responsible for what had happened in London.

  Finally, a man’s voice replaced the breaths from the other end of the phone. “I don’t believe that I am the one who is running. Stay out of my way, or more loss will be coming to you.”

  King let those words wash over him. His mind flashed to his sister and his niece. It flashed to Sam, his friend Kyle, then to Sarah, and even to Natalie—his onetime love. His mind showed him his brother-in-arms, Sean Thompson, getting executed in Syria. Then the day his mother was gunned down in his driveway when he was just fifteen scrolled in his mind’s eye. He knew loss. And every single time he’d lost someone, he’d always made someone else pay.

  This would be no different.

  King swallowed his anger and finished the call. “Everybody has to die someday . . . and your someday is coming soon.”

  22

  King couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t leave the safe house before Agent Karn arrived, but he had so much pent-up aggression he was about to explode. Since he couldn’t go for a run, he did his push-up, burpee, and squat routine until he couldn’t even pick himself up off the floor. He lay there on the cool hardwood, with his mind racing.

  He’d tried to call Sam several more times. Normally, her not answering wouldn’t really worry him. She didn’t sleep much, but when she did, she slept hard. After what happened to Mary, though, he couldn’t help but feel the negative thoughts creeping in. He didn’t like that Sam was alone in Greece, asking people questions about very dangerous people. He needed to be with her. And just as soon as he got a few answers from Agent Roberts in France, that was where he was going. Every instinct he had was telling him that was where he would find the head of the beast. He just didn’t want Sam running into it without him.

  The neighborhood they were in was quiet, so it was easy to hear the car coming. King rolled over to his knees and took the Glock from the coffee table. Having that familiar grip in his hand felt like home. Sam always left a spare in any go bag she kept for him at his drops. He felt just a little bit more invincible with his old friend on his hip.

  King knew the timing matched up for it to be Karn coming from Brussels, but of course he had to be sure. He shut the front door that he’d had cracked, then sidled up to the window and separated the blinds. Sure enough, Agent Karn came walking around the corner. King was caught off guard by how relieved he was to see a familiar face. Even though he and Karn barely knew each other, it had been over a year since he’d seen someone he knew in person at all. He was glad to see that Karn was as paranoid as he was as he approached the door with his own gun drawn.

  King let go of the shade and stepped back. “It’s open.”

  King turned on the couch-side lamp as Karn stepped through the door. When Karn raised his gun out of shock, his face looked like he’d seen a ghost. Probably because in his mind he had.

  Karn lowered his gun. “Ho-ly shit. Xander? I thought you were dead!”

  King put his index finger to his lips, then pointed upstairs. “Call me X,” he whispered.

  Karn nodded, then came forward for a hug.

  “It’s good to see a familiar face,” King said. “Sorry I can’t stick around.”

  “No, I totally understand.” Karn hadn’t changed a bit. He was still well put together, and from the looks of things, the job had yet to age him. “How are you here?”

  “Long story.” King debated whether or not to tell Karn about what just happened to Mary. He decided it could wait. “Listen, things are heavy right now. I just need you to make sure Bentley stays safe.”

  “You got it. How long are you going to be?”

  “Couple of hours. I have to meet someone in France, then I’ll be coming right back. If you don’t have a real important assignment, I could use you for the next couple of days.”

  “You got it. Director Hartsfield said I’m at the agent’s disposal. Though I wish she would’ve given me the heads-up that the agent was you.”

  “What fun would that have been?” Through all the emotion, King forced a smile.

  “Glad to see you haven’t changed.”

  “I’ve got to get going. Don’t go to sleep. I need you aware and alert at all times.”

  “Of course. You got it.”

  King nodded and stepped toward the door.

  “Oh, hey,” Karn said as he reached inside his trench coat, “Hartsfield said you might be hungry, so I picked you up a sandwich.”

  King turned and took it from him. It was like a dagger in the heart to know that the last thing Mary had done was make sure King was fed.

  “Quark sandwich,” Karn said. “I have no idea what it is, but the attendant said it’s a Belgium specialty. They make good waffles, so I figured what the hell.”

  King unwrapped the sandwich, took half of it out, and wrapped it back up. He wasn’t hungry. How could he be? But he knew he needed to eat. He handed the other half of the sandwich back to Karn. “For Bentley when she wakes up. Thank you.”

  Karn nodded.

  “I’ll be right back.” King walked up the stairs.

  When he got to Bentley’s room, he nudged open the door. She was sitting up in the bed, staring at the water out the window. “I heard.”

  “I won’t be gone long.”

  “Please just take me with you.” She turned her eyes to his. The light was off, but the glow of a streetlight was enough for King to see her worried look.

  If King wasn’t concerned about Agent Roberts’s potential involvement in switching the files, he would take Bentley with him. But Roberts could be waiting in Calais to kill him. He couldn’t put Bentley in that situation.

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Obviously it’s dangerous here, too, or you wouldn’t have brought another agent here to watch me.”

  “It’s just a safety
precaution. No one knows about this place.”

  “You did,” she said. “Aren’t there others like you? Couldn’t they be part of whatever the hell is going on?”

  That was exactly why King brought Karn here to stay with her. It was unlikely but not impossible that others knew about the safe house. But he couldn’t tell her that.

  “You’re safe with Agent Karn. He saved my life about a year ago. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Bentley returned to looking out the window. She clearly wasn’t convinced. King took Karen’s Beretta out of his pocket. “You know how to use one of these?”

  She stared at the gun. “I do. It’s not easy to practice in London where they are banned, but my mother insisted I learn. Seeing as how my father wasn’t what you would call one of the good guys.”

  King walked forward and handed her the gun. She took it and laid it on the bed. Then she buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders were heaving, she was crying so hard. King had never been good with this sort of thing, but over the last couple of years he’d been through enough of these situations to know what to do. The young girl he saved in the basement of the drug house in San Diego. The teenager he saved on the pier in Santa Monica. And of course his relationship with his niece, Kaley, whom he missed immensely. He thought about what he would do if this was Kaley, scared for her life, separated from her mother. Then he put his arm around Bentley’s shoulder and pulled her close.

  “It’s going to be okay, Bentley. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  That’s when she threw her arms around him. It caught him off guard. His mind was still in the space of imagining Bentley was his niece, and the emotion swelled inside him. Though Bentley acted tough, she was still just a teen. King couldn’t imagine her fear with people coming after her and not having any of her normal comforts around her.

  “I need to talk to my mom,” she said in between sobs. “She’s in Barcelona for work. What if they want her too?”

  King hadn’t thought about this, but she could well be in danger too. “Where is she staying? I’ll have someone check on her?”

  “I-I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember. She sent me an email, but I have no way of checking it.”

  “Okay, we’ll find her. It’s what we do.”

  Bentley pulled back and looked up at him. “Thank you for saving me. And for not doing what your file said and killing me.”

  King checked his watch. Then he looked at Bentley with a wry smile. “It’s only four in the morning, the day is still young.”

  Bentley smiled and nodded as she wrapped the blanket around her.

  “Try to get some sleep,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  “Please don’t be.”

  King walked back downstairs and headed toward the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Agent Karn stood from the couch. “We’ll be here . . . Damn good to see you, X.”

  King gave a half smile and opened the door. The questions he had for Agent Roberts were already swimming in his head.

  23

  King walked out into the cool night air. It felt good. The lactic acid in his muscles still had him feeling tight, and the sweat at his lower back from the workout gave him a chill. He got into the car and started on his way. He punched the address of the gas station into the GPS. It told him politely that he had an hour and twenty minutes of driving. He knew he could get there in an hour at this time of the morning and with a heavy foot.

  As he pulled out onto the highway, the dark road stretched out in front of him, but the only thing he could see was Mary Hartsfield lying dead in her office. This would have far-reaching effects. Not the least of which was the fact that at the time of Mary’s last breath, he effectively no longer existed. Not for his government at least. What he had been doing might as well have been vigilante work anyway, because if he’d ever been caught, the CIA would have denied knowing he ever existed. But he supposed somewhere in the back of his mind that he thought he would be able to come back in at some point. That maybe once he finished off the last of the terrorists who tried to use his family and friends against him, he could actually get some sort of normal existence back. But with Mary gone, he couldn’t help but think that hope was dead and buried. Now he truly was in this thing alone. Except for tried-and-true Sam herself.

  The phone in his pocket vibrated and jangled his nerves as it shook him out of his deep thoughts. Speak of the devil, it was Sam. And he couldn’t have been happier.

  “Sam, thank God.”

  Though it was four in the morning, her voice was sprightly. “I must have the wrong number. The X I know would never say my name and the words thank God in the same sentence.”

  “Mary is dead.”

  “What?” Sam’s voice went up an octave. “Mary Hartsfield?”

  “No, Mary Poppins.” King looked over at the sandwich on the console. Maybe he should eat.

  Sam had no words.

  “I was on the phone with her. Someone shot her dead.”

  “My God.”

  King pushed the pedal down a little further. The shock in Sam’s tone leaked adrenaline into his system. He was ready to run through fire to find whoever killed Mary. Sam was not an emotional person when it came to work, but since King had faked his death, he knew that Mary and Sam had worked together a lot in his absence. And surely they’d grown pretty close.

  Still, in typical Sam fashion, she plowed right ahead. “What do we know?”

  “Mary managed to get the name Bobby Gibbons out before she was executed.”

  “The senator running for president?”

  “Yeah.” King swerved around the first car he’d seen on the road since he left the safe house. “Listen, Sam. Things have gone to shit here. I’ve got Bentley in a safe house, with Agent John Karn watching her.”

  “Karn? The agent who helped you in Washington? How did you get connected with him?”

  “Mary.”

  “So you didn’t kill Bentley like the file said to do,” Sam said. “I knew you wouldn’t, I just wanted you to see for yourself before we talked about it.”

  “It wasn’t Bentley.”

  “I saw the file, X. It was Bentley and you know it.”

  “No, Sam. Just let me try to make sense of this entire thing, then we can talk about it.”

  “By all means.”

  “What I meant was, the girl I saved from the car bomb, that wasn’t Bentley Martin. Long story short, it was a woman who called herself Karen Panos. Bentley’s doppelgänger. Almost like twins. I believe she’s been posing as Bentley, and maybe even been doing it for years. I think Karen was the one involved with fixing the numbers at Everworld, not Bentley. And that’s why whoever ordered this hit thought it was Bentley who needed to be taken care of.”

  “What do you mean whoever ordered this hit?” Sam said. “You know Mary gives—gave us your targets exclusively.”

  “She said Bentley was not the file she sent you, Sam. Somewhere between you sending it to the agent in place in London and me receiving it, the file was changed.”

  “No, X. That can’t be.”

  King suddenly realized he had thought of the timeline wrong. And so had Mary. He couldn’t believe he’d missed this earlier.

  “Shit, you’re right,” he said. “If you saw that it was a file targeting Bentley, it had been changed before it got to you.”

  Both of them were quiet. The small engine of Bentley’s car screamed as King pushed its limits. He cracked the window to get some air. He was burning up, inside and out.

  “How could that be, Sam?” he asked. “How could someone possibly know, not only when Mary was sending you a target, but how to intercept it, and change it?”

  “I don’t know, X.”

  “Would that sort of thing leave a digital trail?”

  “Again, I have no idea. I’m not a techie.”

  “But Dbie Johnson is.”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “She could probably help us. But I would have to give h
er secret CIA credentials to look into it.”

  “Then do it, Sam. I’m in the wind here. I don’t exist. We have to run this thing down or I can forget ever having a real life again. Moreover, we are the only people who can figure this out . . . and make it right. Bring Dbie in on this all the way. I already sent her Karen’s cell phone to go through. Maybe there will be something there that will help.”

  “What do you mean you sent it to Dbie?” Sam said. “You sent it as yourself?”

  King instantly regretted the decision not to tell Sam he’d been in contact with Dbie in the first place. He’d only kept it from her to save himself a lecture about the fewer people who know he’s alive, the better. Now he knew this was much worse. This would hurt Sam. But hopefully not her trust.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. I should have told you. I just didn’t want to hear your speech as to why I shouldn’t contact her.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I’ll see if I can get in touch with Bobby Gibbons,” Sam said, changing the subject. “Hopefully he knows exactly why Mary said his name to you before she died. I hear a car engine. Where are you going?”

  “To see the agent in London that I spoke with in the tunnel before getting away with Bentley, or Karen, I mean. Mary set it up. She thinks he can help in getting more information on Karen Panos. Or whoever she really is.”

  “Then what?” Sam said.

  “Then I’m going to take the information you get from Bobby Gibbons, and go get the son of a bitch who killed Mary. I have a feeling it’s the same person who changed the file to Bentley Martin.”

  “You’re probably right . . . but you can’t do that. Not now anyway.”

  “What? Why?” King slowed for the upcoming intersection.

  “Because I need you here.”

  “In Greece?”

  “X,” Sam said. Her voice quieted a bit. He rolled the window up to hear her. “I know who the Maragoses were funneling their money to, and who they were working with.”