Weaponized (23 page)

F
owler dives to the floor, stunned but alert; a few years of peaceful living haven’t undone a lifetime of training. He turns back, sees the gunman kicking out the remnants of the living room window and entering, legs-first.

Fowler does a quick once-over of the room’s contents—TV, coffee table, couch, stray coffee mugs, ashtrays, newspapers, laptop computer. Nothing that can be converted into an improvised weapon.

He’s got to get out of this room.

His knives and guns are in the bedroom on the other side of the house. He’s not sure he can make it there before this guy sees him.

The gunman eyes the room, his finger on the trigger, while a second of set of legs starts the same journey through the shattered window. He’s got a partner.

No more looking for DIY weapons and planning in here, Fowler thinks. This is the time to fucking move.

He takes off out of the living room and rounds the bend into the hall. Slugs follow him, splintering the walls, embedding themselves with a bruised thunk.

Sprinting along the hall, Fowler breaks down the situation.
There’s two of them, heavily armed. If I lead them into the bedroom, the field of battle is against me. Even
though my guns are in there, there’s too much open space, and they might be faster than me. They certainly appear to be younger. No,
he continues.
My best hope is to trap them in close quarters and take down at least one of them. I need to even the odds.

With that settled, he makes a bee line to the bathroom, locks the door, and ducks into the tub, which is situated at an angle to the door so if they start shooting through it, none of the slugs will hit him in his porcelain fortress.

He sticks close to the back of the tub, listening for footfalls and forming the rudiments of a plan.

He undoes the first few shower rings, frees the plastic curtain, and rips it off, leaving only the rod. Then he slides the rod out of the wall, holds it in his hand, and waits.

The footsteps stop outside the door. They don’t bother with the lock, just blow it right off and storm in.

Fowler’s fast as hell, and before the first gunman has a chance to fully enter the room, he takes the shower curtain rod and drives it into the gunman’s jugular vein.

The gunman belches up a pearled rope of blood and spit. His gurgle sounds eerily electronic because Fowler also pierced his voice box. He flails around, but he’s blinded by blood. Fowler drives him into the corner with his shoulder, drops him over the toilet, and forces the rod deeper into the gunman’s neck until it finally kills him.

The second gunman is stunned by Fowler’s sustained attack, and while Fowler has that advantage, he rips the rod out of the partner’s neck and then cracks the new guy across the cheek with it, breaking part of his face, right below the eye.

The second gunman stumbles, and Fowler cracks him across the cheek again, forcing him out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

Fowler wrestles the guy to the ground, straddles his chest, tosses the rod, picks up the fallen firearm, and places it directly against the guy’s shattered cheekbone, which is rising like a ridged rock under the skin.

“Who sent you?” Fowler yells.

The gunman is trying to regain his composure; his cheekbone is pressing against the skin, and he needs to scream out before he can talk.

Fowler lets him scream and then continues. “Who sent you?”

“Robinson,” he says. “Robinson sent me.”

Fowler can barely process this. “Why?”

“Because…because you made a phone call.”

“You work for him, for Robinson?”

“Sometimes,” he says. “When he asks me.”

“I’m CIA,” Fowler says. “You can’t just come into my home and kill me.”

“
Robinson can.
The people he works for…they tell your people what to do. You’re CIA. So what? You live in Robinson’s world.”

Fowler takes a moment to breathe but stays on the gunman’s chest. He lowers his head, trying to find some air.

L
ara goes into the hotel room first, gun extended, expecting anything. Once she decides it’s clear, she motions for Kyle to come in.

She doesn’t put the gun down, just walks straight over to the fridge, removes a bottle of vodka, and takes a long swig of it.

Kyle crashes down on the couch, head pounding.

Lara walks over, hands the bottle to him. “Get to work,” she says, and tosses him the flash drive. “And do it fast. You don’t cause the wreck we just did and stay in town. We gotta move.”

“How long you think before they tie it to us?”

“They’ve probably started. Surveillance cameras in traffic. They’ll talk to people on the docks, get our descriptions, have sketches up and blurry CCTV in an hour or two. After two or three hours, we won’t be able to leave this city. It’ll be on lockdown for us.”

Kyle holds up the flash drive. “I don’t know what’s on this…how long it’s gonna take—”

“Get as much as you can.” Lara starts to leave the room to let him work. “I want to know what we’re looking at before we have to move.”

“You okay?” Kyle says.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“You look like you’re gonna pass out.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. Show me.”

She exhales, walks to him, and opens her blouse; her breasts and sternum are covered in bruises from the impact of the steering wheel against her torso.

“Shit. Lara…”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she says, more to herself than to Kyle.

“We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

“Where? The two of us can’t just pop into the ER.”

Kyle has to concede that point.

“Start working,” she says.

Kyle pulls Lara’s laptop close, inserts the flash, and waits for it to load. The computer installs the information from the flash drive, shows the file on the desktop. Kyle scrolls over to it and is given a list of programs the computer is trying to use to open the file.

None of them work.

The first thing that pops up on the screen is a password prompt. Kyle doesn’t want to waste his time on this, because he’s pretty sure there’s something bigger behind it.
“Lara,”
he yells. “In the suit jacket I was wearing yesterday is my flash drive; can you bring it here?”

Lara comes back from the bathroom, hands him the flash, and watches him work.

Kyle ejects the courier’s flash, inserts his own, selects a file called Brute-Forcing, and sets it to work against the password protection.

“What’s brute-forcing?”

“Password cruncher. Runs through a million dictionary words in a second,” Kyle says. “If that fails, it starts in with numbers, lowercase characters, uppercase, special symbols, all possible combinations. It’ll probably crack the password in five minutes or so.”

“It’s hacking stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“And you can do this, right?”

“
This
I can. Yeah. We’ll see what comes after the password. Tell you this much, though—this file is stolen. Even if Robinson made a deal, it’s hot. Because this kind of password protection is meant to keep people out. And I guarantee you whoever owns this flash drive is going to want it back.”

The brute-forcing works and plows through to the password. However, in response to the password, the screen splits into a square cut down the middle, and both boxes overflow with code, vomiting out information faster than the eye can follow.

“And there’s your encryption,” Kyle says. “Waiting behind the password.”

Lara stares at the screen. “Holy fuck. Can you break that?”

“I think I can.”

“You think? You gotta tell me the truth. If not, we need to get out of here and find someone who can.”

“I think I can,” Kyle says again. He watches the encryption engulf the screen. “It’s really good, though.”

“Whatever is in that code can help us find Robinson. And I’m asking you directly: Can you do this or can’t you?”

“Probably.”

“How can I be sure? I
need
to be sure.”

“Lara, if anyone can get through this, it’s me.”

She’s getting frenzied. “Give me a straight fucking answer. I need an answer
now.
No more
if
this or
if
that.”

“I can.”

“How do you know…”

Kyle’s anger rises too. He doesn’t like to have his technical prowess challenged. He’s the best and he knows it. It’s a point of pride.

“Because I built Chandler’s fucking system,” he says. “I did it, okay? I did it. I’m guilty of what everyone says I am. I built the fucking thing. Those leaked plans—they’re mine. I did it. It’s why I ran. It’s why I don’t sleep. It’s the guilt. I let the fucking genie out of the bottle and no one’s going to put it back. Chandler had a live tap and I taught him how to weaponize it. Same as your brother weaponized you. Same as someone weaponized Robinson. We’re all guilty.”

Lara begins to laugh, a soft chuckle she can’t suppress that ends up spreading across her whole face.

Kyle can’t believe he told her the truth because she pricked his sensitive spot by questioning exactly how good he is. “You’re laughing?”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just—” She catches her breath. “It’s just, I actually feel a lot more comfortable around you now. You’re crooked. You’re as crooked as me. People with a moral disconnect can never
really
trust each other. But now we can. Now I trust you.”

“I’m not a crook,” he barks back. “I’m
compromised.
”

“God,” she says. “You’re such an American. Even when you admit you’re dirty, you still have to tart it up. You can’t just be commonly dirty like the rest of us.”

“Okay.” He gives in. “Okay. You’re right. I’m dirty.” He says it again, with a palpable sense of relief: “I’m dirty.” He lowers his head, almost weighed down by the enormity of his sin. Even after confessing it, it’s still oppressive. “You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”

“No one else?”

“Not even my closest friends.”

She gives him a conspiratorial smile. “I’m honored.”

“I’d rather run than tell anyone.”

Lara looks down at the screen, still multiplying with encrypted expressions. “So your program for Chandler can cut through this?”

“Yeah.” Kyle nods. “Its specialty is adapting to any blocking algorithm that you throw at it. The program maps out the curves in algorithms and begins to learn from its mistakes. Then I can design a reverse algorithm to undo it. Of course, I usually have about a hundred interconnected computers helping me with it.”

“So no piece of communication is safe from your work.”

“Not unless it’s encrypted by someone better than me.”

Lara scrunches her face. “Kyle, that’s…Christ. No wonder you didn’t tell anyone.”

“I’ve seen you shoot people—kill people—and you’re gonna take that tone?”

“Yeah, but I just shot a few scumbags…you changed the world. Why’d you want to do that? What was wrong with the world?”

Kyle’s defenses are down. “It excited me. Chandler told me about the live tap, how his people had gotten that down. He knew the work I’d done in algorithms and filtering. He asked me if I had any ideas. I did. I wanted to know if they would work. I couldn’t resist trying them out.”

“Guess they did,” she says. “And
that’s
why you did it?”

“That’s
everything.
It’s like the guys who built the bomb, right? It’s something you don’t think you can
actually
do. It’s just…technically sweet. And then, when it starts working—shit. You realize it can’t be undone. Once you break the social contract, which is already hanging by a pretty thin thread, you can never go back. You have to start running. Like me. You do the things I did, you can’t go home.”

“So it was just curiosity?”

“And ego. I can say that now.”

“Well, you could go home, technically.”

“Right, but I don’t want to go to jail.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry,” he says. “But some days…it’s fucked up.”

“What?”

“Some days, I’m still a little impressed with myself.”

“No. You’re sorry or you’re not.”

“Is it really that simple?”

“You know who you sound like?” Lara smiles.

Kyle knows exactly who she’s thinking of. “I’m not like
him
.”

“Robinson uses his job to justify everything he does. So do you, right? If Chandler hadn’t asked you to do it, you would’ve found someone else to ask you. Just to see if you could.”

“I’m not like Robinson.”

This is hard for her. “You keep living the way you are…not admitting what you did, surviving on your own guilt and spite. You’ll end up like him.”

“I’m not like him.”

“How far away from being him do you think you are right now? Take a look at us.”

Kyle stares at the coding, then opens up the Internet, starts to prepare.

“I forgive you,” Lara says, knowing she needs Kyle to focus on the task at hand. “You’re still my friend.”

Kyle smiles. “You forgive me?”

“Yeah. I do.”

Kyle nods. “Thank you. I mean it.”

“See how easy that was? You say what you did, and someone forgives you.”

“Yeah. Now I just need to say it to the whole world.”

F
owler has dragged his would-be assassin into the kitchen, propped him up against the fridge, and flexi-cuffed his hands and feet together. He dumps a pitcher of ice water over his head to restore him to consciousness since the guy passed out from the pain in his busted cheek.

“Fuck,” the gunman says when the water hits. “Fuck you, man.”

Fowler kneels down next to him. “Who is Robinson? And why are you here?”

“You don’t want to know that shit. You know…you’ll never be safe again.”

Fowler grabs the gunman by the chin. “You tried to kill me in my home. I don’t feel very safe.”

“This is a different kind of not safe.”

“I haven’t been safe since I was eighteen. Try again.”

“Come on, man…they’ll kill me.”

Fowler has no remorse. “So will I. You pick: me or them.”

“I don’t…I don’t…”

“Yes, you do.”

“Can I have some water?”

“I just gave you some.”

The gunman’s in genuine pain. “To drink, you fuck.”

“Start talking,” Fowler says. “Work up a thirst. Then you get water.”

“Fuck you,” the gunman says, which is what Fowler wanted to hear. He knows these hard cases. You’re not going to get them to talk for any reason other than spite. “Fine. Fucking fine,” the gunman says. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. ’Cause now I want you to die from knowing.”

Fowler’s plan worked. Anger tends to loosen the tongue.

“You know what the Flock is?”

“Yeah,” Fowler says. “World War Two. Guys who thought Wild Bill’s OSS were a bunch of blue bloods on vacation in Europe. The Flock wanted to really get their hands dirty.”

“Right. But what made them special?”

Fowler shrugs.

“See, that’s the whole thing, man. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“Then tell me.”

“The Flock’s operatives hid inside corporations,” the gunman says. “They posed as executives in American Express, Philips, Sullivan and Cromwell. They used their corporate identities as a mask…way for them to be global without being suspicious. The operations were paid for and funneled through the corporations. After the end of the war, they kept it going, handling the stuff the OSS wouldn’t touch. Then the head of the Flock got too chummy with McCarthy. He also got too chummy with Jack Daniel’s and had a meltdown.”

“It happens.” Fowler thinks back to Bill Casey dying of brain cancer. But Fowler thinks maybe what killed Bill was keeping all those secrets—or finding out how many secrets had been kept from him.

“The Flock was dissolved and folded into Dulles’s CIA. Then came the Bay of Pigs; Kennedy tossed Dulles, and that was that. No more Flock. New management at the CIA.” The gunman licks his dry lips with his coated tongue. “Can I have
my fucking water
now?”

Fowler walks to the sink, runs the water until it gets cold. “Keep going.”

“Then the Church Committee—”

“I know it.” Fowler had been traipsing around a jungle while Congress was ripping the fingernails out of the CIA, one by one.

“Church Committee stripped it of the ability to conduct overseas ops without congressional oversight and approval. Considering very little of what the Agency had done since it started would get congressional approval, the people left in it scrambled for a work-around.”

Fowler kneels again, hands the gunman his water, and waits while he drinks it all down. “Can I have some more?”

“Yeah,” Fowler says. Time to reward his subject; he’s cooperating.

“So they clean house in what’s left of CIA, bring Bush the First back from his post in China, and install him as the head. Bush knows how to run slush through corporate books. He was the only man who couldn’t find oil in Texas, but he still sold his companies at profit. You do the math. CIA guys like Shackley…”

Fowler nods. He knew Shackley from Vietnam. Shackley gave him his career.

“Edwin Wilson. All the Vietnam guys. CIA was back in business. Behaving on paper, but fully slush-funded. Then the fucking unthinkable, right? Carter gets elected on the platform of taming the CIA. He’s going after the rogue elephant. Carter gets in, installs Stansfield Turner as head. Turner denies Shackley and his crew. They bail. So Shackley, Bush, and the boys privatize the CIA. They restart the Flock to get around Church and Turner. All the seed money for Latin America, for the start of Afghanistan, for Iran-Contra—all of it was Flock money.”

“Right,” Fowler says, remembering the lunar landscape of Afghanistan.

“Problem is, the Flock had to scramble to get front-organization cover. Corporations couldn’t be trusted the way they could in World War Two when everyone was on America’s side. Shit was different now. Vietnam tore this country apart and not everyone wanted to be part of the Flock’s resurrection and lend them cover. So…so these fucking guys
built corporations
from the ground up. And they installed business emperors, not intelligence guys, to run them. Guys who knew how to make money. More CEOs than you want to know about were and are trained by the Flock. Why do you think the government had to bail out some of these companies you never heard of in 2008? Why was it so important? Because they’re doing the government’s dirty work and couldn’t go under. Why do you think no one went to jail for that mess? They’re our people. And that’s me, man. That’s me, and that was Robinson.”

“Robinson
was?
Until when?”

“He still freelances for them. He was never a corporate guy. He…doesn’t like bureaucracy. They were grooming him to be one of the emperors.”

“So he would hop to all these different Flock corporations, depending on the location of his job,” Fowler says. “That about right?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“Who is he working for now? Which company?”

“I don’t know. I got a call from his girlfriend after you called her. That’s all.”

“So VodaFone is one of the Flock’s corporations?”

“Right.”

“They built a legitimate corporation in Germany for European action, and they made Robinson a sales exec on paper to create the legend?” Fowler pauses, putting it together. “And I called the wrong number,” Fowler says. “They backgrounded me and sent in the kill order.”

The gunman nods. “More water.” He touches his cheek, recoils in pain. “God—you fucked my face.”

Fowler’s still stunned. “These people sent in an order to kill me. My own people.”

“They’re not your people, Fowler. They’re no one’s people.” The gunman can’t stop touching the bone in this cheek, even though it hurts like hell. “Listen, we gotta get outta here. I was supposed to call after the job was finished. Either kill me or keep talking, but we can’t stay here. In a few minutes, there’s gonna be a second team coming.”