Kill on Command (35 page)

Sandy stayed put.  In a way she was happy, the personality profile was dead on, he would not let any harm come to her.  Her plan was also progressing the way she wanted.

A phone rang.  It was on one of the agents.  Sean leaned over and picked it up. 

Sandy went berserk. 

“DON’T ANSWER THAT!” she screamed, moving towards him, gun still up, trying to grab the phone with her free hand.

She was too late.   He opened it and put the phone up to his ear.  Sandy had her gun in his face.

“Hello,” Sean answered.

“Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941,” the voice said.

Sean at first was confused.  His eyes were locked on Sandy’s.  Her icy blue eyes focused on his, her gun up, inches from his face.

“Go on.”

Sandy kept the gun on him even though she knew he was fast enough to disarm her.

“Is Sandy standing there?”

Sean did not answer.
 

“The Indian
s won the World Series in 1948,” Waters said, calmly.  The triggers installed via hypnosis were his last hope to end this quickly.

“Go on.”

Waters smiled.  He had them.

“I want you to strangle Sandy.  Then take her gun, place it in your mouth and pull the trigger.” 

Waters waited on the other end for sounds of a struggle and a gunshot.  He did not get what he wanted.

Sean’s expression changed.  Sandy went back and forth on whether or not she should just shoot Sean.

Then Sean spoke.

“I am coming to kill you,” he said into the phone.

Waters was silent.  The analysts in the room with him did not make a sound.  The triggers were clearly broken.  Waters’ door to Sean’s mind was permanently closed.

“If I hear or see that Blackhawk anywhere near here, I am going to kill everyone on board and then fly it through your fucking office window.”  As Sean said it, he took his right index finger, extended it to the barrel of Sandy’s gun and slowly pushed it away from his face.

Waters hung up the phone.  He looked around the room.  No one said a word. 

“Turn the chopper around!  Send the team on it here!”  Waters screamed.

“What?” an analyst questioned.

“JUST DO IT!”

The man picked up a phone and contacted the helicopter. 

“The rest of you, start tearing this office down!”  He stormed out of the room, wishing he had taken McFarland’s advice.  He was going to have to work on another solution.  He had an idea, but it sickened him.

Sandy put her gun down as Otis was coming out the front door.

“Sorry about this Otis.  I was not going to let these people get to you guys,” Sean said.

Otis walked around the bodies of the men, and then looked over his shoulder at two bikers gawking.  Bits of brain matter and bloody skull fragments were all over the gravel.

“Drag these guys around back.  We’ll throw them down a mine shaft later tonight.”

Sandy picked up Sean’s Glock and put it in her bag.  She grabbed the agent’s weapons and threw them over her shoulder.  Sean and Sandy walked back into the club.  The bikers gave Sean a wide birth.  Otis walked behind the bar and Sandy and Sean stood on the other side.

“Can I have a beer?”  Sean asked.  Otis opened a beer and placed it in front of him.  The bikers were all standing behind them.  Sean could hear the voice over from the Discovery Channel describing the powerful jaws of the hippo.  He thought it was weird that he was not shaking after what he had just done.

“Who were those two?” Otis asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Assassins,” Sandy answered.  Otis looked at her.

“They were here to kill us.  Don’t worry.  Nobody is coming to look for those guys.”

“That’s good,” Otis said, popping open a beer.

“I don’t know how they found us so fast,” she said, wracking her brain for the answer.

A guy from the back of the room spoke up.  Sandy turned around to look at him.

“That truck you drove in here has OnStar.  They probably followed the signal all the way over here,” the old biker said.

He was right.  Sandy had made a big mistake.

Sean looked over at Otis.

“You want a new truck?  Less than 300 miles on it.  Big enough to carry a bike,” Sean said with a smile.

Otis was silent.

Sean kept selling.  “I tell you what, I will trade you even for the old red Ford Bronco out there and I’ll throw in the car those two douche bags drove here.  What’s that Bronco, a ’74?”

Otis still did not say a word.

“OK.  Plus, what’s left of the donuts in the back.” 

“Deal and it is a ’74.  Good eye,” Otis said, without hesitation.

“I knew the donuts would seal the deal,” Sean said, shaking Otis’ hand.  Otis started laughing again.

Sean and Sandy walked out to the truck.  Sandy handed Otis the title to the new truck and Otis dropped the keys to the old Bronco in her hand.  Sean loaded the duffel into the Bronco, followed by the backpack and the remaining items from the Chevy.  Sandy walked around to the passenger side, flipping the keys to Sean.  The agent’s car was already being prepped to be disassembled in the garage.

Sean walked a couple of feet over to Otis and stuck his hand out.

“Thanks Otis.” 

Otis shook his hand.

“Still FOC?” Sean asked.

“For life baby,” Otis said, smiling.  Otis knew the men Sean had killed would have knocked off some of his guys, or worse.

“Thank you.”  Sean felt honored.  He turned and walked back to the red Bronco and got in.  It started on the first turn of the key.  Another biker appeared in Sandy’s window.

“The transmission is new and we dropped a new crate, small block 302 in there. Aluminum heads.  Gorgeous motor.”  He paused to catch his breath.  It was clear he loved the Bronco. “No hard top on this one, just the big canvas soft-top.  Might be noisy.  The seats are new as well.   They are kind of a lumberjack red and white plaid.    I stripped off all of the rust, replaced panels where I needed to and sprayed black bed liner through out the floor of the interior.   Most of it is new.  It is a sweet ride.  We were going to sell it on EBay.  It should get you where you need to go.”

“Thanks,” Sandy said.  These guys were full of all sorts of surprises.  EBay? 

Sean started to pull away, as Otis walked up to the driver’s side window.  He was pulling at his cut, and ripped off the 1% patch.  He handed it to Sean.  Sean held it up in front of his face like he had just received his diploma.

“If anyone is, you are.”

“Thank you.”  Sean said, genuinely touched.  He shook Otis’ hand again and he and Sandy left the club’s compound and headed back towards the interstate. 

“Still heading south?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me where?” 

“Nashville.”

“I would appreciate more than one word answers, please,” he said, getting aggravated.

In Russian, she said, “Sorry, Sean.  We are going to meet my father.”  She sat staring out the windshield at the road.

Unconsciously, Sean replied in Russian, “Your Dad?” 

“Da.”

In Russian, “Am I speaking in Russian?” he asked.

“Yes and quite well.” she replied, in her father’s native language.

“How is he going to help us?” he said, looking over at her, more than slightly skeptical.

“He’s Spetsnaz.” she replied.

IV

What’s a honey trap?

On the Road – I-64

Sunday − Midday

“
Spetsnaz?”  Sean asked.  He had never heard of it.

“Russian special forces.  He was part of Alfa.  Kind of like our Delta,” she explained.

Sean did not really know what the Delta team did, but just nodded and kept asking questions.

“Oh.  What’s he do now?”

“He sells bicycles near the beach in California.”

“OK,” Sean replied, his confidence waning.

“I wouldn’t worry about him,” Sandy replied.

Sean and Sandy passed the Ashland exit on I-64 as they headed towards Nashville.  As promised by Otis’ buddy, the old Bronco ran like a champ.  But he was right, it was noisy.

“Tell me about Waters.  I can tell that you don’t care for him.”

“You can?”

“Yeah.  You don’t hide it well.  A lot can be inferred from tone.”

“He threatened to make sure the New Haven police sent me to jail.  He also threatened my father.  My father defected in the ‘80’s from the USSR and Waters threatened to expose him to people in Russia that would want him dead.”

“It’s been thirty years.  People would still come after him?”

“We think so.  You just don’t walk away.”

“Ok, so how can Waters just send you to the klink?”

“I threw a man through a plate glass window.”

“Now, I can imagine that,” Sean said.

“It’s not funny.”

“Sorry I said that.  What happened?”

“It’s OK.  I came home after class to my apartment and I heard yelling inside.  I walked in and my roommate’s boyfriend was screaming and hitting her.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him to stop.  He told me to shut my mouth, screamed that it was none of my business and to get out.”

“But, you didn’t.”

“No.  I told him to leave and that I was calling the cops.  That really made him mad.  He turned towards me and took a swing.  My father had taught me SAMBO when I was little, so when I saw him swing, I grabbed his arm, used his momentum and threw him through the window of our apartment.  He was cut up pretty bad.”

“SAMBO?”

“It’s a Russian martial art.  Kind of like judo, but a little more violent.”

“Why didn’t they take him to jail?”

“My idiot roommate took his side.  She said I attacked him and the New Haven police took me in.  They were skeptical, but did it anyway.  That’s where I met Robert Waters.  He showed up at the police station and threatened to make sure I was punished for what happened if I didn’t come to work for him.”

“How did he know you?”

“I interviewed on campus with a couple of government agencies.  He ran me down from there.  Apparently, I popped up as a solid candidate for this type of thing and he did some digging.”

“It was clearly self defense.  How was he going to push it through?”

“I told him that too, but he also threatened to hurt my father.  I don’t know how he got my father’s records. They were supposed to be buried, but he did and he was hell bent on seeing that the details regarding my father’s whereabouts wound up in the wrong hands.”

“So this is blackmail?”

“Yes.  And now it’s about more than that.  It’s about all the people he has killed or hurt.  People like you.”

Sean did not say anything.  He was still trying to make sense of the bloody cascade of reality that was crushing him.  He felt used.  Sandy said the people he killed were repulsive, violent terrorists.  Nonetheless, it infuriated him that this man had taken control of his life – his free will.

Sandy continued.

“After graduation, I entered a pretty intense training program.  I trained along side Special Forces teams at Ft. Bragg.  Hand-to-hand combat.  Weapons.  Jump school. Language classes.  My first assignment required me to seduce businessmen, government officials and others Waters thought he needed leverage over.”

“Seduce?”

“You know what a honey trap is?” she asked.

“No.”

“Based on intelligence, I would show up where we knew a target would be.  I would fall all over them, eventually getting them to a hotel room or apartment where we would either question them or gather embarrassing video on them, which Waters held over their heads.”

“How long did you have to do this?”

“Too long.  It sucked.  I hated it.  Eventually, I moved on to something else.”

“He just let you move on?”

“Not by his choice.  He recruited me partially because of the way I look, which pissed me off.  I killed a man who tried to hurt me when we got back to a hotel room.  I grabbed one of my shoes and jammed the heel into his eye.  His bodyguard burst into the room and tried to slice me to pieces with a knife. My back up arrived and shot the bodyguard in the head before he was able to do any real damage.  He left me with a scar on my chest and stomach.  Waters was furious.  He didn’t care that I was nearly killed.  They had to dump the bodies and he didn’t get his precious intel.  He determined I was not cut out for the honey trap role.”

“Did your father know about this?”

“No.  Not right away.  I kept it from him.  I felt like I needed to protect him.”

“What did he think you were doing?”

“Working for the government, but I think he knew something was suspicious.  I finally told him what was going on about six months ago.  He naturally is not happy with Waters and wants to get me out.  I know you want to know why you are here with me.”

“It crossed my mind.”

“We need your help.  I was praying that you would make it through this.  When you were in the hospital, I knew I had to take the chance and save you from Waters’ goons.  Waters needs to answer for the things he has done.  The unspeakable things he has done to dozens of people.  The things he has done to you.”

“Shouldn’t we report him?”  Sean asked, naively.

“To whom?  He operates outside the law.  You can’t just arrest him.”

“Oh,” Sean answered, not really grasping the seedy elements of the world, which he was now a part.

“The people that were chasing us?  They all are technically dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah, dead.  Waters pulls borderline men out of the service, fakes their deaths and brings them in to work for him.  The two guys I shot at the hospital died in Afghanistan.  Both have been itching to kill me from the day I met them.  They never worked for me.  They were Waters’ guys from the start.  The two that you shot in West Virginia probably served in Iraq or some other god-forsaken place.  He buries their personal information in the massive data system that the U.S. government maintains.”

Sean was squinting, looking forward.  His mind was reeling.  Sandy could almost hear the gears going inside his head.

Sandy continued, “Waters is the type of person who thinks he is doing the right thing for his country, but is tearing apart everything the country stands for in the process.  He sees himself as a patriot, but in actuality is no better and in fact is worse than the people he is targeting.”

“This is a lot to take in.  I flew a helicopter, shot some men, who were technically dead, and now I am going to hook up with a former Spetsnaz soldier, who is going to help me kill more CIA operatives.”

“Look, Sean.  Waters will not rest until we are dead.  You are a loose end from a program that did not exist.  Same with me.”

“The men I killed . . . “

“Like I said, no one is going to come looking for them.  I also have a feeling your new friend Otis will take care of everything for us.”

Sean watched the Kentucky countryside shoot by as he tried to process everything she had just told him.  He felt sick to his stomach.  He could not tell if it was because he was hungry or going to puke.  He told himself it was hunger. 

“Sandy, I am sorry.  I need to eat.  Let’s pull off here and get something.”  He saw a sign for a diner and pulled off the road.

“Sure.  We have plenty of time.”  She looked at her watch and did a quick calculation in her head.

Sean pulled into the diner’s lot and both of them got out and went inside.  The place was basically empty.  At Sandy’s request, the hostess seated them at a booth at the back of the restaurant.  She took the seat against the window.  Sean sat down across from her and looked out the window.  The place had the comforting smells of bacon and maple syrup.

“What can I get for you two?” a waitress in her late fifties asked.

“I’ll have an orange juice,” Sean said, trying to smile.

“Same,” Sandy said.

“Thank you. I will be back to take your order,” the waitress said, as she turned towards the kitchen.

“I’m going to wash up,” Sean said.  Sandy watched him go.  She could tell this was all weighing heavily on him, but she was confident he would come through for her.  Her father would make sure everything went according to plan.

Sean entered the men’s room and walked over to the sink.  He washed his hands and splashed water on his face.  He looked in the mirror for a moment.  Besides, killing these people, the thought of being a father was hard to get his arms around.  It was too much to grasp. He walked back to the table, opened the menu and decided on a Colorado omelet and an order of pancakes.  Sean wondered if a Colorado omelet was called a Colorado omelet in Colorado, or was it just an omelet? Sandy ordered a couple of eggs and bacon.  The food came out fast and Sean tore into his meal.  He was famished.

“My food intake is crazy.” Sean said, between bites.  Sandy looked at him and decided this was the best time to tell him the last piece of news.  Not necessarily good news.

“Sean, there’s one more thing.”

He put his fork down.

“What?  What else?”

“Waters injected you with an experimental serum.  It is designed to increase your reaction time,” Sandy winced, as she explained it.

“What the hell?”  Sean said and started to go white.  His face felt hot and he looked at his hands.  They were shaking slightly.

“I have noticed that the combination of your OCD induced exercise, and the serum has led to an increased caloric intake.  Your body is burning through fuel at a high rate of speed.  That’s why you are obsessed with food.”

“What kind of serum?  What else is it going to do to me?”

“I don’t know.  It does not have a name and I have no idea what the long-term effects are.”  She got up and slid into the booth next to him.

“Sean, it was supposed to kill you in thirty to forty-five days.”

Sean leaned forward in the booth and placed his hands in his lap and laid his head on the table.  He did not speak.  He just stared into the formica tabletop. 

“Sean.  Sean.  Look, you have made it more than a year.  I don’t think you are in danger,”  she said, placing her hand on his back.

“You a doctor?” he said, sitting back up and turning towards her.  His eyes were red.

“No.”

“This Waters, too?”