56. It’s-a-Small-World Fuckery
it’s-a-small-world fuckery
Mirren
Alarm bells sound in my head, and I fight every single instinct to not take a huge step backward.
I feel almost like a kid who refuses to retreat from a snake coiled to strike, but Janis wouldn’t know or care.
And I’m fully inhabiting Janis’s life. Posture, clothing, greasy hair, and her state-of-the-art glasses.
“I’m Janis. Where are the others?”
He offers a nonchalant shrug, turning to face the substation, and lights up a cigarette.
I know even if I can’t see her that Mom is at my eleven o’clock. Young “drove off” only to return on foot and is somewhere at my four or five.
If Exton Ranger is to be believed, he’s somewhere between eight and nine. He’s given me no reason to doubt him. I bet he was in place before sunup.
I take the toe of my boot and shove it in the grass, mussing up the roots and focusing all my energy on breathing and thinking.
Looking bored is good. And this isn’t a sign that I’m good or bad to the team.
It’s just Janis being Janis. So is wandering, so I do that a little—making sure my glasses pick up the substation name and any other pieces of data to convey my whereabouts.
Brody is surely clued in and shitting a brick right now.
I hope he can find some information on “Sally.” I need to get a better look at him. It’s more than bothersome that Young with all his resources found none.
A lone man walks our way, and I reach behind me, pretending the scratch my thigh, waiting to see whether he is friend or foe. In this situation, it’s more like foe or foe, but team Jones is at my back and has firepower and surprise on our side.
“Fighter?” the shorter man with a thin mustache guesses looking at Sally’s back. To me he adds, “Are you Janis or Sally?”
So this is Ricky Germain, aka Hello. He’s wiry, even skinny, with too little muscle underneath. The man seems to have enough to hold his frame up, but in the way those skinny Hollywood actresses do, the ones who should be offered a cheeseburger and then made to eat it.
“You Hello?” I ask, with no enthusiasm, but nod. “Janis. That’s Sally.” I hitch a thumb over my shoulder and shuffle my boot in the grass.
A bubble of laughter escapes him. “Not what I pictured, but to each his own.” He extends a hand. “I’m Ricky.”
Shit just gets worse.
Real name. Bubbly personality from a social outcast with narcissistic tendencies. Less than two days after I presume he blew up an aircraft. He’s either on his meds… or has decided this is his final stand. How this continues to devolve is beyond me.
Maybe I should retire, become a content creator, and start doing Pilates. That sounds hard, but not life-threatening.
I snort. “Sorry.” I wave. “That wasn’t about you. Where’s Fighter? He’s the one who wanted this time and place.”
Hello shrugs. Sally eventually stubs out his cigarette on the ground and turns to extend a hand to the newcomer, grumbling about wasting his time.
After a few more minutes of the worst small talk, the three of us split up enough to wander the site, supposedly knowing what we’re all looking at and meet back at the locked gate.
Hello pulls a pair of bolt cutters from his backpack and slices through the metal fencing.
“No need to cut the bolt, when the fence is weaker,” he offers.
The fact that it wasn’t electrified was lucky for him. So many are, and he didn’t even bother to check. He takes DGAF to a new level. Hello squeezes through the hole he cut, scraping the backpack through the cut wires with more caution than he does his skin.
Sally scrubs a hand down his face as he watches. “Whatcha got in there?”
“Bomb,” Hello replies nonchalantly. “Took me since two nights ago to get all the stuff. Different hardware stores, some farm supply shops. Had to spread my shopping out to not get pegged. Fucking ridiculous what the government does these days. Am I right?” His speech is too quick, too excited.
“Thought we needed to wait for Fighter,” Sally surprises me by going on. He’d never be described as loquacious, and here he is chatty.
“Fuck him,” Hello responds. “He thinks he’s the brains, but he’s not. Always messaging me privately to plan and strategize.” He uses air quotes.
Sally and I glance at one another but both return our gazes to the man who puts on the fucking vest inside the cage of the substation.
“Vest,” I say, hoping comms picks up the sound.
The glasses show to the agency, not to the team here. And my crew very much needs to know the state of play isn’t someone fucking around.
Taking a step back, I place some space between me and the whacko who no longer fits the profile. Wanting to see pain inflicted and watch revenge play out is not the same thing as putting your life on the line for a plan that does not work.
This isn’t a coiling snake. It’s a den of vipers.
Now I have to know, and I have to get answers. “Ricky, if you wanted to take out the power grid, why not worm into the chips? Why not take it out remotely? Digitally?”
“I’m a hero, Janis. Not a computer geek.
My name will be on every news channel. There will be blogs about me, articles for decades to come.
I’ll have a Wikipedia article.” He laughs.
“I already do… I wrote it this morning. Time to publish.” He whips out his phone and smiles with glee while pressing buttons.
His smile rivals the Joker on any Batman movie.
“He’s sick,” I say to Sally, never taking my eyes off Hello.
“Does he know this won’t impact the grid at all, but be an annoyance for thirty thousand rural residents who rely on it?”
Turning my head, I study the man at my side.
He’s probably my age if not a little older.
Tall, broad. He has resting dick face, complete with a permanent scowl, and a small scar at the corner of his right eye.
But his bearing is too straight, too perfect if he weren’t fighting to hold it differently.
“You must be my crew,” a voice booms behind us.
Startled, I jump. Get it together, Jones.
Spinning, I see the man I assume to be Fighter morph from pompous arrogance to surprise to fear. “You!” he seethes, staring straight at Sally.
“You,” Sally growls right back.
What the fuck is happening?
But I fight to keep my focus concentrated on the meaningful thing I’m supposed to understand because Hello starts cackling maniacally. He’s like a bad movie villain complete with overacting. He’s not right in the head. When this is over, we’ll get him the help he needs.
“Make me famous, friends. Promise? Wait—I need really good last words.” His thumb is on the detonator switch in his hand. His others tap his lips as if that will help him find the words.
Fighter looks confused and spends a moment staring at the man in the vest.
I don’t wait for more. I run.
Sally does the same.
Unfortunately, I know the sound and the feel of the ground shaking beneath me… when everything around becomes shrapnel on a trajectory. The force knocks me to the ground, and I land all wrong on my bad knee.
A scream pours through the air, but it’s not mine.
My knee getting fucked again means nothing. Pain means nothing. My arms pull me in an army crawl across the earth faster than any time before in my life.
I know what I have to live for.
I know the future that lies on the other side of this clusterfuck of an op.
And I’m fighting for it with every tug and every pull.
Strider
Fitzgerald Young’s orders be damned, I run.
I have trained for this my whole life. Middle school, high school, college, and since.
The man at my side runs full out, but he knows—he knows—she is mine. Mine to save. Mine to protect, however bad I’m failing at it.
Three hundred yards, through flying debris, fiery metal crashes and clings to my skin, and I run.
I scoop up Mirren as if she weighs nothing, tossing her over my shoulder and run until I can lay her in the grass someplace safe. Someplace away from falling bits and fireballs. Jamie does the same for the man who ran at her side. I’m trusting the rest of the team to get the latecomer.
Swelling and bruises to her face send me into anger faster than even the most unforgivable of lies. Her mouth opens in a silent scream of pain as she writhes on her left hip.
“Baby? Mirren, can you hear me? Talk to me.” Caressing her face, I brush the grass and gravel from her good side. I know I hurt her when I pull the metal singed into her skin off of her.
“Scooter,” Jamie bites, standing between me and the man he holds at gunpoint, blocking my view.
“Mirren?” the man queries. “As in Jones?”
“What the fuck?” Jamie focuses on me for a quick moment before turning back at the man. “You want to talk? Spill, but not about her.”
“Fuck you.”
I know that voice. Why do I know that voice?
“I’ll give you something to fuck with,” Jamie starts.
Shouting across the field steals my attention. Young is frog-marching a guy whose hands are tied behind his back toward us. The whole time the man is trying to push in the other direction, as if his doom awaits him here.
Aaron? What the fuck is my lead commercial project manager doing here? In all the it’s-a-small-world fuckery, I wouldn’t put a trillion-to-one bet on this.
The man in question hits his knees to refuse going any farther. Young simply drags him across the ground, without looking like he expended any effort at all, and dumps him near our huddle.
“You suck at taking orders, Anderson.”
Unless they’re from the woman I love, that’s true. And even then, I’m not great at it. “You’re right.”
“Finally fucking got you, Fitzgibbons.”
Wait. I twist to get a view of the man speaking.
If my eyes aren’t betraying me, that’s Price O’Neill, the man who assaulted me and nearly killed me.
The man who broke out of prison. The man who was undercover at Electric Peoria to sink me.
A man I can’t know anything about without blowing Mirren’s cover and getting her fired.
I fucking hate secrets.
“Price.” His name on my lips is bitter and incredulous. “Price O’Neill.”
Later, I’ll wonder how those are the words that roused Mirren from whatever stupor she was in.
Later, I’ll wonder how she could move so fast when she was in so much pain.
Because my feisty, perfect woman rolls to one side, rises on her good leg, and lunges, pummeling the man Jamie holds at gunpoint.
When he’s bloody and she’s spewed everything hateful she can think of, she shakes her wrist in the air as if that will make it hurt less.
It’s the opening I need since managing to dodge elbows and fists is more precarious than it looks in the movies. I pry her from his supine form and throw her over my shoulder yet again, being careful not to reinjure whatever is hurting her.
I retreat a few steps and slide Mirren down my front. When we’re eye-to-eye, I kiss her hard on the mouth and ask against her lips, “What hurts?”
“My knee.” Tears pour over her lashes. It’s pain, but I can tell it’s defeat too. She’s worked so hard on her recovery.
“We’ll get you checked out. When can you leave?”
She shrugs. “Never had an op go belly up so badly or so quickly. Since I have no one to report to, I really don’t know.”
That’s when the whirling sound of sirens comes careening over the hill.
“You good, Jones?” Young says, looking over his shoulder.
Mirren, now on her feet under her own steam, nods. “Go.”
With nothing more than a return nod, the man takes off at a clip I’d never expect from someone so solid.
Within moments, we stand—my fiancée, her brother, one former employee and one soon-to-be former employee—completely surrounded by more cops than I’ve ever seen respond to anything ever, all with guns pointed straight at us.
If it weren’t December, this would be brilliant marketing for a deodorant company. Five people, arms all aloft, everyone trying to talk at once. But it’s my lady who takes the lead—tip of the spear as it were—and speaks.
“My name is Mirren Jones. I work for the CIA under handler Brody Daxton.”
“What the fuck?” Jamie whispers as if there’s no air in his lungs.
“Behind me you will find another agent named Sal Smith,” Freckles continues.
“Way to blow my fucking cover,” Price, or rather, Sal, grumbles.
“CIA doesn’t operate on U.S. soil,” an officer says.
“That’s what you think,” Sal mutters.
“As well as my fiancé and my brother, who have nothing to do with this op. There’s also a man named Aaron Fitzgibbons who will, after you release his custody to the FBI, be charged with treason, conspiracy, and sedition as he plotted to take down the U.S.
power grid. He was one of two co-conspirators.
The other”—she nods to the wreckage— “the other was Ricky Germaine of Minneapolis. You’ll find he’s wanted in connection with the flight to Phoenix that exploded not long after taking off night before last.”
Their faces go ashen as they look between each other in disbelief.
She attempts to kneel but collapses with a hiss of pain, and we silently follow her lead and all take a knee.
“Smith and I have been working the case from different angles. Langley can corroborate. We all willingly accept our cuffs and our Miranda rights. Please contact the agency to follow proper channels.”
“Did you know?” Jamie whispers.
I nod.
“And you let her walk into this?” His face is set as stone.
“Does anyone really let Mirren do anything?”
He snuffles, as if he stopped a snort mid sound and is trying to swallow it down.
“Yeah, so no one can know.”
He levels me with his gaze. “Are you telling me I need to be discreet?”
“I’m telling you she’s going to give me hell for bringing you, but I knew I could trust you.”
“Fuck you for being all chivalrous and shit.”
We’re cuffed, surrounded, and being marched to our respective cruisers when June appears out of nowhere, extends a foot, and puts Price-slash-Sal face down in the dirt. “Oops,” she says with feigned apology.
Jamie looks like he’s seen a ghost. “Mom?”