Page 36 of Troubled Water
Till death do us part.
“I’d like to circle back to a question I asked you this morning.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why did you kill someone intentionally?”
“Because of my wife, and before you ask, yes. I’d do it again,” I immediately answer.
31
YESTERDAY EVENING
Iheft the stock of my rifle against my shoulder and glance through the laser sight. I have no shot without taking aim directly through my own heart and soul.
A bead of sweat runs down my temple. Cal was right when he picked me up. “Nothing is going to prepare you for what you’re going to see, Thorn. Nothing.”
I scoffed. Was I fucking wrong. If I make it out of this without joining my wife in either Heaven or Hell, I’ll apologize to Cal for underestimating him. Not my BUD/S training nor the thousands of hours of target practice as I specialized in becoming a SEAL sniper at Camp Pendleton. None of my missions at the Agency, nor any I’d sent my agents on as director, came close to the nightmare I was enduring.
I’d relive the hundreds of hours spent surviving by eating bugs in a swamp and breathing through a reed, all while hiding in plain sight in a ghillie suit just to get her out of the way of the bullet I’ll have no choice but to release close to 500 yards away. It’s a shot many can make, but I’m one of the few men in this country who can without alerting the perpetrators.
Forcing them to trip the deadman’s switch and blow off the top of McCallister Construction.
For all the orders I’ve coolly followed before it became my time to sit behind the desk and direct my own cadre of agents, I’m being asked to true up my account for each and every decision that ever caused anyone a single ounce of hardship with the convenience of my arrogant pride.
Even though my days are spent behind a desk instead of actively in the field, I’m prepared to do this. I still train as hard as any agent I send into the field, whether that’s physically or mentally. Still, I must be getting older. Somehow, this maniac managed to break through multiple layers of defenses I surreptitiously put in place to avoid this very thing as I worked with the president and the DOJ. Somehow my defenses were breached and my heart was stolen right from beneath my nose. They’ll pay for that. They’ll pay for scaring her.
They’ll die if they hurt her.
Shrugging my face against my shoulder to wipe away the imperceptible bead of sweat, I listen through my earbud as other snipers from agencies ranging from state police to other federal agencies make their way to other nearby rooftops. In the briefing we had earlier, I determined the only way to take out this bastard with a minimal number of civilian casualties is if we take all the fuckers out at the exact same time.
What I couldn’t factor in was the fact I may as well be signing my own death sentence by doing my damn job.
Till death do us part.
My heart threatens to pound out of my chest when I consider the situation I see inside that office.If only the person wearing the suicide vest weighed down wasn’t her. If I could guarantee she’d react with her head and wouldn’t let go of the kill switch in her left hand. A hand that bears the wedding ring I slipped on not long after we reconnected ten years ago.
Giving myself the briefest of moments, my eyes drift closed. I recall the faint scent of coconut and rum—scents I always associate with her before throwing blind prayers skyward. I don’t care if tomorrow I’m waterboarded, hit by a bus, or stabbed in a dark alley. I’ll gladly trade in on every heroic thing I’ve ever done so I don’t have to be the one to take the shot.
But God is too busy to listen to a son of a bitch like me if what I just saw through my scope is anything to go by. I need to save a roomful of American lives—my wife and her colleagues. I’m the man with the plan. If I don’t take my shot, they’ll all die. Period. End of discussion. Yet, in that way life flashes every moment of importance before your eyes before the fiber of your existence changes, I know the next few moments are going to make every decision I’ve ever made pale in comparison to the one I’m going to have to make in a little more than a minute.
Is it really possible I’m going to have to shoot through the body of my wife to take out the terrorist holding a room of people hostage on the night of our tenth wedding anniversary?
Resolution to punish those who dared to touch what is mine surges through me even as chatter picks up in my ear. With a grim determination, I tune out the static in my ear as I set my watch to count down from sixty.
Above the DC offices of Hudson Investigations, where I’m nestled into the roof to aim into the offices of McCallister Construction, motors from Blackhawk choppers are overhead spotlighting the target for us. The building, one of my wife’s designs, comes alive under the spotlights. It lives and breathesalong with the rest of us—holding steady even amid our panic as each pass increases my heart’s fear. I force my mind to tune out the familiar scream of their blades—a remembered sound from the hundreds of missions I successfully completed in the past.
The Blackhawks are there as backup to swoop in and perform a rescue or blow the enemy to bits, depending on what signal is given. Christ, I hope it isn’t the second because if that’s the case, I might just run into the building right before they do because there’s nothing to live for if she’s gone.
This isn’t the frequent missions I was thrown into in Iraq or Afghanistan where my role was to protect the guys’ six amid the familiar staccato of AK-47s being shot like they were firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Nor is it the controlled fury of theSea Force, where desperation and broken souls of the human intelligence contractors threatened the safety of my team.
I’m not asking an old friend to rescue the infrastructure of our national security from a computer hack of catastrophic proportions. I almost wish it were a case of mistaken identity—another situation I could resolve with one hand behind my back after one of my agents went to ground after her identical twin was murdered.
No, this is a hell of my own making because of who and what I am—the path I chose to take in becoming director of the Agency. Because I am, the bastard frantically waving a gun around the room while my wife’s wrapped up in enough explosives to take out the entire building thinks they have the goddamn right to fuck with what’s mine.
Not for long.
My watch starts beeping, giving me a countdown.
