Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller
Read Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller Online
Authors: Bowen Greenwood
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidences either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © March 2015 by Bowen Greenwood. All Rights
Reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form, by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews
and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Alyssa Chambers was
born into one of America’s oldest, wealthiest, and most powerful families. She
grew up steeped in tradition as she watched her father pull the strings to
manipulate politicians and government. She observed as he bent the system to
his will, using his connections and influence to be the power behind the
headlines. She tried to rebel against the whole system, sinking into
thrill-seeking and risk-taking. She turned to a life outside the law, learning
to steal and to spy and not to get caught. Her rebellion carried her back home,
as she began to steal from the same wealthy and powerful politicians with which
her father worked. Eventually she stole from the wrong person at the wrong
time, breaking into a politicians office on the very night he was assassinated.
Framed for the murder, Alyssa ran for her life, looking for the assassin and
trying to clear her name. The truth she eventually found was more horrible than
she could ever have imagined. She had been deliberately set up to take the
fall, and the man who framed her was her own power-mad father…
Alyssa Chambers stood in
the middle of chaos, calmly planning how to survive.
Her revolver lay on the
floor, chamber open, brass cartridges scattered across the hardwood, gleaming
in the dim light.
An old man in a
three-piece suit also lay on the floor panting for breath. His tie was askew in
his collar – almost ripped off.
A slender man in his
thirties with wavy brown hair hung up the land-line telephone on the end table,
then knelt beside the old man, offering him a sip of water.
Her family estate always
smelled like aged whisky and leather. Tonight was no exception, despite the
fight she’d just had here.
Furniture was tipped over
and scattered. One lamp lay on the floor, bulb broken.
Federal Agents would
arrive any minute.
They were coming to arrest
her.
Alyssa was a slender
woman. She was clad entirely in black. Normally jet black and past her
shoulders, her hair currently had the ragged, neck length, colorless look that
came from too many temporary dye-jobs and efforts at disguise. She stood with a
calm that belied the fact that there were probably fifty men armed with
explosives and automatic weapons bearing down on her that very second.
Those armed men would be
expecting to confront a master of unarmed combat. She had punched, thrown,
disarmed, threatened, kicked in the head, or otherwise assaulted nearly a dozen
of their brother agents over the last few days. She was also accused of
murdering the man who would have been President. Given that, they would come
with full force, guns drawn, ready to open fire at the slightest sign of a
threat.
And, unfortunately, she
had left the armed guards fully-conscious outside. When the Federal Agents and
hired guns ran into each other, it was only going to make the FBI’s attitude
worse.
Her main hope of survival
lay in making sure the agents understood in advance that she wanted to
surrender without a fight.
But how? All of her allies
and connections were dead. Her father – once a mighty colossus of American
politics – lay dazed on the floor, trying to catch his breath after she nearly
shot him. She knew one Congressman who would believe her, but she didn’t know
how to reach him. That left only one person who even had a hope of helping.
Decisively, she scooped up
the phone and dialed a number from memory. As might be expected, the
past-midnight call from an unknown number was ignored. She called again.
She had to repeat it a
third time before a groggy voice finally asked, “Who is this?”
Tom Wheeler. He was
communications director on the Presidential campaign that Alyssa once worked
for. When he spoke, she could almost picture his high-and-tight buzz cut.
“It’s Alyssa Chambers.”
That earned her a
profanity, and she quickly said, “Don’t hang up” with the brisk, authoritative
tone of someone who expected to be obeyed.
“You killed Rich West and
you held a gun on me. Why shouldn’t I hang up on you?”
“I told you before that I
didn’t kill him, Wheeler. And to prove it, I just called the Feds.”
That was a slight exaggeration.
It was actually her friend Matt Barr, currently attending to her injured father
on the floor, who had called 911, but the net effect was the same.
Alyssa continued. “They’re
on their way to take me into custody, and it doesn’t take a genius to know
they’re going to come in hot. You hired me. You got me into this. Now I’m
likely to get killed if you don’t help me. I’m innocent, Wheeler. If you hang
up now, an innocent woman is going to get gunned down by a few dozen Federal
Agents, and the man who actually killed Rich West will get away scot free. I
need your help.”
Wheeler was silent for
precious seconds. Alyssa could practically feel the Blackhawk helicopters
bearing down on her.
Finally, he said, “Make
your pitch.”
Breathing a sigh of
relief, she said, “The Secret Service and FBI are on their way here right now.
We called in reporting the assassin was here. Like you, they believe ‘the
assassin’ means me, and they think I’m a particularly dangerous one. They’re
going to come in ready to shoot first and ask questions much later. You’re in
politics; you’ve got connections. I need you to call someone in the Federal law
enforcement chain of command and tell them to take me alive.”
“Has it escaped your
notice that I’m on the far side of the aisle from the administration, Chambers?
Far far across the aisle? I’m running the campaign against them.”
“You still know people.”
“None of the people in
power even like me. They’re not going to take my word in a case like this.”
In the distance, Alyssa
heard the distinctive
whump-whump-whump
of helicopter rotors.
“I’m almost out of time,
Wheeler. I can hear the choppers. They’re coming.”
He replied, “Give me your
word that you really want to surrender. If I stick my neck out on this and you
lie to me, I’ll find a way to make you pay Chambers. I swear I will.”
The choppers were coming
in low, she could tell from the volume. With a top speed of nearly 200 miles
per hour, they were bearing down fast on Chambers Estate. She had a minute.
Maybe less.
“Yes, Wheeler. You have my
word. Please. I’m not accustomed to having to beg.”
He said, “I’ll call the
Attorney General. But never forget I saved your life.”
With those words, he hung
up. Alyssa dropped the phone and assessed the room, looking for anything else
she could do to increase her chances that the Federal Agents wouldn’t shoot her
on sight.
She kicked the revolver as
far across the floor as possible, so the agents would not perceive her as being
near a weapon.
She moved to the center of
the room to be highly visible from windows and doors.
The floor shook from the
roar of the rotors directly overhead and seemingly all around them. Standard
tactics for a raid like this called for a team on the roof and two teams on the
ground.
Over the thunder of the
chopper blades, she heard the unmistakable sound of an AK-47 on full auto and
then the sharper staccato of a 5.56 millimeter carbine firing three round
bursts. Alyssa surmised that the guards she had snuck past to get inside had
just come to an unfortunate end.
The downside was when the
Federal Agents encountered live fire that made them all the more likely to
enter the house with guns blazing.
“Matt!” she shouted.
The man with wavy brown
hair looked up from his place on the floor, turning away from her father.
“They’re about to breach
the door. Kneel down and get your hands in the air if you want to live!”
She only spoke to Matt.
She didn’t particularly care if Federal Agents shot her father. He had betrayed
her worse than she could ever have imagined.
She set an example,
dropping to her knees and elevating her open palms. Matt came up beside her and
knelt as well.
“They’ll probably come in
from front and back at the same time. They’ll probably use explosives to blow
the door. They’ll use CS gas, which is going to mess up the entire front of
your face in a really painful way. Do not panic when that happens, or you might
do something that gets us both killed. Do not swallow. Coughing and spitting
will help a little but not much. Get ready!”
At that moment, the front
door did indeed blow off its hinges and fly several feet down the hallway.
Immediately Matt moved,
hobbling on his knees to get in front of Alyssa, placing himself between her
and the men with guns.
The front window shattered
and a cylinder came flying through, mist hissing out of it.
A second fist-sized
cylinder arced through the air, landed on the hardwood, and rolled. Alyssa saw
it, identified it, and almost lost her cool.
Stun grenade! I didn’t
warn Matt to expect a flash bang! Please don’t panic Matt…
The flash bang grenade
went off. The light was so bright it was painful even through her closed eyes.
The noise was so loud it hurt her ears, leaving nothing but a painful ringing.
Although Alyssa couldn’t
see it, men in black fatigues, wearing full body armor, poured in through the
front door. Their faces were covered by gas masks. Each carried a
short-barreled carbine.
Someone grabbed Alyssa’s
hair and threw her forward. A quarter-century of martial arts training screamed
out to drive her elbow back and get the attacker’s ribs, but she didn’t. She
twisted as much to the side as she could to take most of the fall on her
shoulder. Then she let the agent mash her face into the ground and roughly pull
her hands behind her to cuff them.
The barrel of a gun
pressed against the back of her skull.
Through the ringing in her
ears, she could barely hear the man screaming.
“You’re under arrest for
the assassination of Rich West! Just twitch, I dare you! I’d love to blow your
head off! I wanted that man to be President!”
A political candidate stood on the stage with blue
bunting behind him. The bare, anonymous hotel ballroom had been covered in red
white and blue for the debate. The man’s full head of gray hair framed a face
with a thin nose and round, wire-framed glasses. He wore a black suit and bold
yellow tie and as he spoke, he moved his eyes around the audience, trying to
make eye contact with as many people as possible.
His name was Doyle Cobalt, candidate for the U.S.
Senate.
He was giving his closing remarks after a debate and
said, “…it’s time to get serious about fighting crime and terrorism. It’s time
to stop these people before they start. That’s why, if you elect me to the
Senate, I’ll introduce the Genetic Probable Cause Bill. No more being caught
flat-footed when some lone-wolf terrorist attacks an army base. We’ll know who
they are before they strike. We’ll stop them before they strike. We’ll provide
real security to our country.”
Matt Barr sat in the audience, covering the debate
for
The Post
. Doyle Cobalt was one of two candidates in the primary
election for one of the most hotly-contested U.S. Senate races this election
cycle. As a political reporter, covering Cobalt was his job. He had to report
what the man said.
He didn’t have to like it.
Taking a break from the keyboard to brush a stray
strand of his curly brown hair out of his eyes, Matt noticed that he’d gotten
ink on the cuff of his rumpled light blue dress shirt, but he ignored it. He
was never very good at dressing sharp, and there was no one here whom he wanted
to impress. The only person he wanted to impress was in the Federal prison
outside of town.
One more time, he pondered the ethics of his current
assignment. His job was to cover this Senate race, among others. He didn’t have
to like Cobalt, but he did have to at least try to be objective about him.
The problem with that was Cobalt’s opponent,
Congressman Mike Vincent.
Vincent and Matt had known each other for about
twenty years now. Vincent had been feeding the reporter good inside scoops for
all that time. They went to church together. They barbecued on weekends
together.
It was hard to be objective about a race when one of
the candidates was his best friend.
And, now that Cobalt had finished, it was that same
Mike Vincent who was giving his concluding remarks.
Vincent wore a navy blue suit, white shirt, and red
striped tie — the very picture of a politician.
His
hair was half gray and half blond. He was a tall man, and he was in very good
shape. He smiled broadly.
Matt tuned back in so he’d have some quotes to throw
in the article. He heard the Congressman say, “For too long, America has
languished in the grip of politicians who value power and money more than truth
and humility. I won’t promise you bills that I’ll pass, but I will promise you
what kind of man I’ll be. I won’t break my campaign promises the moment I get
to Washington. I won’t say one thing here at home and another with donors. I
will earn your trust every single day, or I’ll leave the job of being your
Senator to someone who can. Thank you, and God bless our great state, and God
bless America.”
As Vincent concluded, the debate moderator stood up
to say a few words of parting but, of course, the crowd was already getting up
to leave. Matt hurried up so as not to get trapped in the flood of people. He
wanted to hit the “spin room” backstage, where campaign staff from both sides
would be waiting to tell reporters like him who had won the debate.
Unsurprisingly, they always seemed to conclude that the one they were working
for had won. But still, how they made the case could be instructive.
Unfortunately, the departing audience made it hard for
him to reach the door that led backstage. The press of traffic carried him away
from it, not toward it. Finally, caught between a large man and his three
children, Matt found a door that said “staff only” and opened it to disappear
inside.
Immediately, he was out of the traffic. Instead, he
found himself in a dimly-lit anonymous corridor with no decoration, no other
people, and no signs indicating where it led. He picked the direction that was
toward the debate stage and headed that way, carrying his laptop under his arm.
The corridor twisted and turned several corners,
sometimes seeming to take him farther away from the spin room rather than
toward it. Matt began to grow nervous that he’d miss the chance to pick up
anything useful from the campaign flacks.
But then he heard voices around the next corner.
Thinking he had arrived, he turned.
At once, he ducked back.
It wasn’t the spin room; it was just another blank
corridor. And the voices didn’t come from spin doctors, they came from Doyle
Cobalt himself and one other man — presumably a campaign staffer of some kind.
Hiding behind the corner, Matt listened to them.
“…have no idea the real potential of the bill.”
“You know I don’t like it when you talk that way.
It’s good…”
“…maybe. But… this is, and who’s…”
“If we can just get this passed…”
The voices faded. Looking around the corner, Matt
saw the two men walking away.
What bill were they talking about? Cobalt’s Genetic
Probable Cause Bill? What was the other man hinting at, that it could do more
than anyone knew? And who was the other man, anyway?
His journalistic appetite whetted, Matt made a snap
decision.
He darted around the corner and followed them,
making a point to hang back far enough that he could always have a corner to
hide behind.
As he trailed them, doing his best to stay out of
sight, Matt could catch tiny little snippets of their conversation.
“… never mind criminals…”
“…can’t talk about that ‘til…”
“…no idea…”
Cobalt had made the Genetic Probable Cause Bill the
center of his campaign. The idea was pretty easy to grasp. In his former work
as a university professor, Cobalt had discovered one of the genes that appeared
to cause criminal tendencies in humans. Variations in this gene affected the
risk that a person would be violent or antisocial. The Genetic Probable Cause
Bill would let law enforcement use genetic information to identify terrorists
before they struck or criminals before they broke the law.
Matt thought there was a whiff of George Orwell
about it. But with crime rising and terrorist attacks on American soil getting
worse and worse, a substantial number of voters liked the idea.
Enough of them liked it that Cobalt was winning the
Senate primary by a respectable margin.
If there was more to the bill than the public knew,
something they couldn’t talk about until after the election, that might make a
real story. Other than that, the debate had been a boring recital of talking
points.
Matt heard another door open and close. He zipped
around the corner and hurried to catch up. As he approached the door, he saw
that it said, “Exit only” in large red letters, but didn’t give it much
thought.
Following Doyle Cobalt and the mystery man, he went
through the door.
Cobalt was gone, but the mystery man was waiting for
him.
They were in the parking garage. Cars lined both
bare cement walls. Pillars were spaced evenly between the parking spaces, and
giant numbers adorned the walls, the better to help people find their vehicles.
Standing about fifteen feet from the door, the man
who had been with Cobalt wore a snarl on his lips and no hair on his head. He
cracked his knuckles, then let his hands ball into fists as they dropped to his
side.
“I thought I noticed someone following us,” he said.
“Snooping. Listening to us.”
Matt felt his heart start hammering as the man took
a step forward, toward him. He was a huge physical specimen, easily six four.
His arms and chest were bulky, like an athlete, and that snarl on his face
broadcast hostility.
Matt tried to back up but, as promised by the sign,
the door was closed and he couldn’t get back through it.
Taking another step toward Matt, the man said, “The
safest way to deal with a snoop is to make sure he never has a chance to tell
anyone what he heard.”
He faced the unidentified man and swallowed to try
to get his tongue wet enough to speak.
“Who are you?” Matt asked.
The man’s only answer was to take another step
toward Matt. His movement radiated menace. Every primal instinct Matt had
screamed fight or flight.
It seemed unreal. Moments ago he had been in a
boring political debate among crowds of people. Now he was trapped with someone
who gave every appearance of planning to assault him – maybe even murder him.
Who was this guy, and why was a candidate for U.S. Senate hanging out with him?
There was nowhere to run. In front of him, the
physical presence of the stranger blocked any hope of escape. Behind him, the
locked door offered nothing better.
Matt desperately recalled a few tips about fighting
that he’d picked up from Alyssa over the years.
Run if you can.
If you can’t, cover your face with your fists.
Don’t shout for help; instead shout “Fire!” It
brings more people.
If you have to fight, strike for the eyes, knees,
elbows, or groin. It’s not about honorable fighting; it’s about being the one
who survives.
He picked out the big man’s eyes and knees, trying
to imagine ways to hit at them.
Then everything changed. The thug in front of him
reached to his waist and began to draw something out.
The only logical conclusion was that it was a gun.
Suddenly, things went from scary and surreal to life
and death. The man was way bigger and obviously better equipped, but whatever
else happened, Matt did not intend to be shot without a fight.
He hurled his expensive laptop right at the man’s
head. As the man ducked, Matt shouted as loud as he could and charged forward,
swinging his fists wildly. Before he could even think about whether his punches
were landing, Matt felt a big, beefy fist plow right into his gut. He doubled
over and groaned.
At that moment, a car pulled into the garage. Its
bright headlights blinded Matt. He felt some movement from the man in front of
him, but couldn’t see what it was.
The blue hatchback slowed down, and Matt heard the
sound of a window opening. A man’s voice said, “What’s wrong, man? Are you OK?”
“There’s a man…” As soon as he opened his mouth,
Matt threw up from the pain of being punched in the solar plexus. The people in
the car got out to help him. When he could stand up straight again, Matt did
so. He looked around, wanting to tell the people in the car about the
mysterious thug who had been planning to shoot him.
But the man who had been with Doyle Cobalt was gone.