Active Shooter (3 page)

“That's not the kind of sexy confidence that
peeks a girl's interest,” she replied.

I shot her a hard stare, doing my best to
pretend I really did believe she was beyond my reach.

She sighed and said, “Just hear me out.”

“This is me being a good listener.”

Bridget leaned over the table and lowered her
voice “I'm doing an investigation into Special Cyber Ops. TechOps?"
She paused, baiting me to react.

I didn't.

She went on with, "You may have heard of
them? The sort that mean I shouldn't have my cellphone with me when
I'm having sensitive conversations?”

The world seemed to grow quiet around me. My
mind fought for clarity and could only arrest panic. For now.

“Or if that’s too much,” she added, “perhaps
you can tell me about inter-agency coordination and
cross-jurisdictional operations.” She paused again, waiting for my
reaction. I did my best to maintain a blank expression.

She added, “Those are the nice phrases to
make us feel better after 911. Just to make sure everyone feels
safe. Rumor has it these cross-jurisdictional folks are actually
running the show, way behind the curtains, back there in the
shadows.
Cross
-
strappers
, people in the know call
them. That ring a bell?”

My back stiffened and a tingling sensation
fluttered in my stomach.

I eyed
Guayabera
man. He had just
shifted in his seat, straightening up as if readying to pounce into
action. Though he wasn't looking at us, I could tell he was using
the bar's backdrop mirror to watch us. Only God knew how we was
listening to our conversation, but I could manage a couple of
guesses.

If I was on edge before, now I felt myself
sink to another level. Bridget knew more than I anticipated. She
knew enough, anyway -- enough to tell me to leave my cellphone back
in the hotel to avoid GPS tracking, and enough not to have hers
with her lest it be hacked to work as a listening device. Someone
reading techno-thrillers or watching TV spy series episodes would
have known as much.

But they wouldn’t know about the
cross-strappers
.

My real concern? She knew enough to connect
me with that sort of technological trickery. She knew enough to
connect me with a world of shadows and operators no one this side
of the curtain was supposed to know about. More dangerous than
that, she seemed to have no clue that in spite of all that, we were
still under surveillance.

My mind raced, not so much to sort out what
she knew about me as to decipher how she knew it, and whether I
should confirm it or provide additional details. I found myself
torn between my initial intent to keep my past sealed and an almost
irrepressible urge to impress her with it. I thought about how I
would tell her, what I would leave in, what I would withhold, all
the while knowing that whatever I shared would amount to little
more than unsubstantiated tales from a has-been.

“Do you really think this is proper lunch
conversation?” I asked, by which I meant that the topics she wanted
to discuss required a different, secured venue.

“The American people need to know this,
Andre.”

“The American people are long past beyond
need.”

“Meaning?”

“It's all about what they want,” I replied.
“The big flat-screen TV, the RV, preferably attached to a boat
trailer, the big house, the fancy fast car, season tickets to their
favorite team's home games. They've all gone way past what they
need and it's all about what they
want
. And so long as they
get that, do they really
want
to know about anything
else?”

“Well, it's what I want, Andre. With every
bit of me. I want to let them know.”

I pushed back with, “The journalistic quest
sounds good, but who are you really working for?”

She frowned and opened her mouth halfway as
if I had spoken in some lost language. “For the network. For
myself. I'm thinking of writing a book about this.”

I weighed her answer. It wouldn't be the
first time a reporter cooperated with U.S. Intelligence. This foray
of hers could be a test to ensure I was still trustworthy, still
keeping my little secrets in the black recesses of my mind. It
could be entrapment to get me to do their bidding. For all I knew,
the
they
behind all this were the cross-strappers
themselves.

Or I was letting my mind twist into gnarled
complications because that sort of thought pattern had become my
natural way of thinking, with distrust, deceit, and ill intent the
starting points and foundation to my logic.

Perhaps Bridget was just as she represented,
an enterprising reporter sniffing out an interesting story. Perhaps
I was reading too much into this, giving her too much credit when
she only knew enough disparate tidbits to sound informed, but not
enough to assemble the grand puzzle. Once more, I told myself not
to be paranoid.

“Tell me about these Tech Ops, Bridget. Just
to make sure I'm landing on your page.”

“Surveillance, hacking, Cyber warfare.
Information gathering through technological means.” Her eyes
narrowed, scanning my reaction for the slightest indication of how
close to the target her salvo had come.

“You mean the stuff any pimple-faced teenager
with a souped up laptop can do?”

She smiled and tilted her head. “I mean the
stuff our taxpayer dollars buy.”

“With Snowden available in sunny Moscow,
you're asking a starving photographer, part-time teacher about
this?”

“Photographer, part-time teacher.” She
smiled. “Both worthy professions, neither of which have been paying
your bills very long. It's been what? A little over one year since
you left your last job?”

“Am I really that interesting? Was it really
worth it to dig into my past?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out.”

“Look, Bridget. I wish I could help--”

“Do you, really? Wish you could help?”

“I can't.”

“I protect my sources.”

I almost told her she should worry about
protecting herself. “It's not going to work.”

“Why not?”

I stood up. Bridget scarcely made a gesture
to stop me and said nothing to prevent my exit, mostly because I
didn't give her any time to do so.

On the way out I passed
Guayabera
man.
Looking at me in the bar's mirror, he gave me an almost
imperceptible nod. He followed me out of the restaurant and stayed
about half block behind me, content to let me wind through side
streets on my way back to my hotel.

Along the way, and as I entered the hotel's
lobby, my lack of a disguise caused many double-takes and more than
a few knowing looks, though mercifully, no autograph requests. From
the lobby's cocktail lounge area, a smiling, rosy cheeked man
shouted, “Where did you learn to shoot like that?” To which I
resisted replying with, “Not at the neighborhood shooting
range.”

I briefly considered taking the stairs to my
14th floor room. More than the physical effort it required, the
thought of getting cornered in a stairwell by
Guayabera
man
and his colleagues did not appeal to me. I walked to the elevator,
turned, and waited for him to catch up. He welcomed this with a
wink.

With what I read as a disguised bow, he
pressed the elevator call button. A ding signaled an awaiting car.
He waved me in and entered after me, already reaching into his
jacket to extract his ID, which in another second he was flashing
to a trio of smiling women before they could join us in the
elevator.

“Official business,” he said with a soft
smile. “Please take the next elevator. Thank you.”

He pressed the 14th button, the doors closed,
and I waited for the upward jolt before asking, “I take it we need
to talk?”

With an index finger to his lips, his smile
now extinguished, he said, “Not here.”

“You know they're already Tweeting that a Fed
and Andre the hero are taking an elevator ride.”

“Not here.”

We entered my room a couple of minutes later.
There, with annoyance rather than surprise, I met another man,
sitting by the small desk next to the bed, dressed in a plain gray
business suit and black tie. He closed my password protected
laptop, where he'd passed the time rummaging through my files, and
swiveled in the chair to face me.

“I'll be outside,”
Guayabera
man said,
and he closed the door behind me.

“Nice pictures,” my guest said pointing at my
laptop. “You're building quite the portfolio.”

The logical reaction at this point would have
been to act outraged. I chose to not be predictable. I took off my
shoes and rearranged the pillows to make a comfortable seat on the
bed. Then, as if he weren't there, I turned on the TV, brought up
the on-demand movie menu, and scrolled to the adult section.

He cleared his throat. “If I can't have your
undivided attention here, we can talk elsewhere.”

“What topic do you have in mind?”

“Your discretion.”

“That's a superfluous discussion.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why aren't you?”

“Oh, let's see. Because you gave a reporter
an interview, and she's now ready to pump you for all you've
got?”

"This is where you tell me what I've done
wrong, or you leave me alone."

"Think a little, Andre," he said. "What could
she possibly want with you?"

“She just wants to make a name for herself
and a few bucks while she's at it.” I turned off the TV and faced
him. “It's the American way. You know, the very thing your precious
mission with its little secret methods and tools is supposed to
protect.”

“You could have been more definitive with
her,” he said.

“You mean I could have lied.”

“You said enough to further peak her
interest. She won't let it go.”

“When I signed my NDA, the one that lands me
in jail if I spill your precious, it said nothing about lying.”

“It said you would protect--”

“What do you want?”

“To make sure you're not divulging what you
shouldn't.”

“Would we be talking here if I had?”

He grinned at me and shifted in his seat.

“I've kept my end of the deal,” I added,
perhaps sounding more defensive that I wanted to. “Your end says
you leave me alone.”

“You endangered your end of the deal when you
had to play superhero in a terrorist-infected terminal.”

“You wouldn't have done the same.”

“I would have called 911.”

“Excuse me. That's right. Of course you
would.”

“But you're so much better. A hero.”

I looked away and stared at the black TV
screen. I could see an outline of myself there, a shadow. For a
moment I wondered whether a photo of that outline would represent
all that was left of me.

“I guess I enjoy killing,” I said. “Isn't
that what my personnel file says?”

I waited for him to respond, but he seemed
content to let my words linger in the space between us. Either that
or getting into the topic of my past missions and the blood that
came with them comprised subject matter best left to a more secure
venue.

I added, “I've done nothing to even remotely
suggest a connection between this incident and what I'm supposed to
protect.”

“Still, you had to come to New York and give
that interview, didn't you? You just had to get as close to the
line as you could.”

I paused, musing that his last remark
probably derived from an observation in my personnel profile.
Thrill seeker,
I imagined it saying, with an added
correlation to the way I loved chasing the double-X chromosome.

I pushed the thought aside and said, “I came
because if I didn't, it would have caused more attention. All in
the name of
protecting.
Get it? As it is, I came across nice
and boring, 6 KIAs notwithstanding. Before you know it, this
presto-celeb storm will blow over.” I pointed at the window,
letting it stand for an imaginary Bridget, “And I gave her nothing.
Whatever she has on you -- yes, on you, because I'm out of it --
she got somewhere else. You best focus your attention on her and
her sources.”

He smiled the sort of smile that told me I
had just walked into the dark alley where he'd intended to trap me
all along.

“Yes, about that,” he said. “We were
thinking--”

“Don't waste any saliva on it. Not happening.
Already crossed that dead sea, and left it a little deader than I
found it.”

“It would give us assurance. It'd let us know
you're still trustworthy.”

“Really. Trustworthy. You already know full
well I'm not trustworthy. Mentally unstable, isn't that what your
report said when I last served my country?”

“Time heals all things.”

“And you're ready to give me a second
chance.”

“I hear your banking account is a little
depleted these days,” he said with another of his grins. “This
would give you a chance to rebuild your reserves, pay off a few
bills, maybe buy that nice latest model camera you've been
craving.”

My cellphone started buzzing on the desk, and
we both looked at it. He took it and looked at the screen, then
stood up and tossed it to me.

“Your girlfriend's calling, probably worried
about you.” From the room's door he said, “I know it was difficult
last time, but think about it. We'd appreciate it.”

He stood there for a second, trying his best
-- and failing -- to pay-forward his appreciation.

“My name's Walter,” he said. “I left my
contact info in your laptop. You need anything, you call me. 24/7,
I'll answer.”

He stood there, wooden and uncomfortable. As
if to relay his sincerity he forced himself to stay for a few
awkward moments before he let himself out of my room.

As the door closed, I found myself breathing
in shallow breaths. My chest tightened in that familiar way it did
when I sensed this fragile world of mine was about to implode.