Lethal Force (3 page)

“Yes, but please call me congressman,” the rotund man said behind his high perch. “I worked hard for that title.”

“Sir,” Jake repeated with defiance, “you were a car salesman where you got your law degree online with money your father, the owner of the dealership, gave you, while you sold less cars than a dyslexic stutterer with tourettes syndrome. Then your father set you up with a law practice, where you lost every case, until he also paid to get you into your current position. So don't talk to me about hard work. While you were building your excellent political career, I was getting my ass shot at in countries you've probably never heard of.” He paused for a second, took a drink of water and watched to see if the congressman's face would turn a darker shade of red.

Then Jake went on to explain every question in detail, his attitude swiftly moving from defiantly indignant to royally pissed off.

The last person to question Jake was the junior member of the committee, a woman from his home state of Montana. He had heard of her, but she had never really represented him, since he had not actually lived in Montana for years and she had only recently been reelected into her second term. Congresswoman Lori Freeman had one other feature that had caught Jake's eye as the members entered the room—she was not only a natural beauty with her long blonde hair pulled back into a braid, she proudly wore cowboy boots below her frilly dress.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,” Congresswoman Freeman said.

“Not that I had much choice, ma'am,” Jake said. “You don't mind my calling you ma'am do you?”

“I would expect nothing less from a fellow Montanan, Sir.” Her eyes shifted slightly toward her colleague from California. “Now, what is your current position?”

“Upright and reasonably oriented,” Jake quipped.

She blushed.

“I'm sorry, ma'am. Sometimes I can't help myself.” He cleared his throat, smiled and continued, “I'm retired.”

“You're very young to be retired.”

“Well, once in a while I consult on security matters.”

She lifted a piece of paper slightly and said, “In fact, you have become quite wealthy since leaving the Agency.”

Jake shook his head and smiled. “Ma'am you aren't trying to hit me up for back taxes are you?”

Subdued laughter echoed through the chamber.

“No, Sir,” she said. “I understand that money was made while you worked overseas, and, although I don't understand the entire seventy-two thousand pages of our tax code, I know that you paid taxes in the country in which you were currently living. I was simply setting the stage for my next question.”

He was starting to like this junior congresswoman from his home state. “Well then,” Jake said, nodding his head to her. “Please ask away.”

“How many people did you kill during that whole Berlin affair?”

Wow. She had cut through all the crap and asked what all the others really wanted to know.

“Ma'am, I only killed those who tried to kill me. I didn't take a head count.” But he did have the faces of each etched in his brain. And not only from the Berlin affair. He was haunted specifically by some more than others.

“Understand,” she said and paused to consider her words. “Do you consider your actions successful?”

“Yes, ma'am. I had a one million Euro bounty on my head, as did many other former intelligence officers. I was lucky enough to not get killed. So, at least for me, I consider that a success.” He smiled broadly at her.

She returned his smile and said, “That's all I have for this witness.”

And that was the end of the inquiry. It was political theater at its worst. Congressmen and congresswomen from both sides of the aisle had asked the same questions over and over in obvious partisan fashion and slightly different tone, playing it up for the cameras, to get their point of view into the congressional record.

Jake walked back to his hotel room along the snowy roads of the capitol. He had considered taking a cab, but he needed to clear his mind after that attempted grilling. Hell, he needed a shower.

When he sensed the presence of a car behind him, moving far too slow, even for the snowy conditions, he thought about the gun that was not comfortably under his left arm. Then he simply stopped suddenly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket, and stared at the car, which stopped alongside him, the window in the back lowering.

Jake almost didn't recognize the woman in the leather seats of the Lincoln Town Car. She had pulled her hair out of the braids and it now flowed down over her shoulders.

“Mister Jake Adams,” said Congresswoman Lori Freeman. “You look like you could use a ride on this cold January day.” She gave him a bright smile.

Returning her smile, Jake said, “Is that an order?”

“No, Sir. I just thought you could use a friend after that entire affair.”

A friend? Although they had been cordial in the chambers, she had still asked him some of the most direct questions during the session. Somewhat reluctantly, he got in as she slid to the other side of the car and nodded her head to the driver to continue driving.

“What can I do for you?” Jake asked her.

“That's what I like about your family,” she said. “You shoot from the hip and tell it like it is.”

He was confused. “What do you know about my family?”

“You don't know?” She smiled. “I guess I just assumed you were playing with me at the hearing because of my relationship with your family. They wanted me to recuse myself, but I thought you might need a friend.”

Jake simply hunched his shoulders.

“I worked at the same law firm as your brother Victor in Missoula.”

That made sense. He knew that the congresswoman had gone to the University of Montana and was a local girl. But he was so far from that past he had pushed that life to the far reaches of his mind. When he entered the Agency, he was encouraged to forget about his family—pretend as if they didn't exist, or had never existed. Open knowledge could get family members killed or used as leverage.

“How is my brother?”

“He probably wishes his older brother would stop by the homestead once in a while,” she said.

“Listen Congresswoman Freeman, we are away from the hearing, and I don't think I need any more lectures today.”

“Please, call me Lori.”

“Did you work hard for that name?”

She put her hand to her mouth and smiled. “I thought I was going to break out into a complete little girl laugh when you chewed out that blow-hard from California.”

“It wasn't planned.”

“No, but it's already a huge hit on the internet,” she said. “On its way to a million hits. Wait for Fox News to play it up, along with talk radio, over the next few days. They'll all be calling you for interviews.”

“I'm afraid I don't have a book to sell.”

“You should write one in a hurry.” She laughed with a cute, endearing chortle.

They sat for a moment in silence as the car cruised along the Potomac River near the National Mall.

“Lori?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you need from me?”

She looked out her window at the swirling snow coming down and said, “Our committee was briefed on something last week that was very disturbing. I can't tell you the details. You understand.”

Yeah, he understood ‘need to know' better than most, and usually the members of congress only needed to know the bare minimum. Only enough to pay for the intelligence community's activities. They had a tendency of leaking more than a toddler's diaper after drinking a Big Gulp.

“And what can I do for you?” Jake reiterated.

“The Agency isn't telling us everything,” she said.

He laughed. “For good reason.”

“Hey, I spent four years in the Air Force as a cryptographer,” she said. “I understand classified secrets.”

“I'm sorry,” Jake said. “I didn't mean you.”

She let out a breath of air. “You don't remember me, do you?” Her expression was one of incredulity. “Hellgate High? Go Knights.”

“You went to Hell Hole?”

Smiling, she said, “I forgot we used to call it that. Yes, but you were a senior when I was a freshman. And my last name wasn't Freeman. It was Franks.”

“Any relation to Bob Franks. I played football with Bob.”

“My older brother. He died a few years back from cancer.”

“I'm sorry. He was a good friend. Wait, you were that skinny kid cheerleading during our games.”

“I was junior varsity at the time, but they had us help out during the big games. You were good.”

He hunched his shoulders. “That was a lifetime ago. I'm sorry I didn't remember you. I normally have great recollection.”

“I know. I've followed your career with the Agency and since.”

“Then you know I'm more retired than not.”

“But I need you, Jake,” Lori said. “Your country needs you.”

“That's what they always say just before they send me out to get shot at. You have the entire intelligence community at your fingertips, why me?”

“I told you. They're not telling me everything. I need a friend on the ground. Someone I can trust to tell me the real story.”

Jake had been keeping up with where they were driving until the last mile or so. Now the driver behind the sound-proof barrier pulled the Town Car to the curb in front of Jake's hotel.

She pulled out a small envelope and handed it to Jake, which he reluctantly accepted and considered carefully. A big part of him wished he had stayed in Patagonia and then gone south to Tierra del Fuego to set the hook on those huge sea-run Browns.

“Look that over and give me a call,” she said. “My card with my personal cell phone number is inside. Please call me tonight after six. I have to get back to the floor for a vote.”

Jake reached for the door handle but stopped. “I'll destroy what's in here after reading it, but from now on don't put anything down in writing.”

She smiled. “I'm covered there. You'll see. Oh, and make sure you give your sister, Jessica, a call soon. I did a river raft with her last year. She could use a call from her big brother.”

He knew he hadn't been a great brother over the years, but he had kept his distance for the protection of his family.

Jake shoved the paper inside his jacket, got out and watched the large car pull away, a plume of exhaust making Detroit proud.

●

The lone figure walked with a cane along the secluded path in Rock Creek Park a few blocks from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Although he had been a civilian contractor during his time in Iraq, the bomb that took his right leg didn't seem to care. He thought back on his evacuation to the German hospital and then his military transportation to Walter Reed with all the battered and injured soldiers and marines. They had all been too young for their lives to be transformed so drastically. He had been in his mid-thirties at the time, and he remembered thinking mixed thoughts. He was lucky to be alive, but he would never be whole again. Yet, he had pulled himself together and made his way into one of the top K-Street lobbying firms in DC.

He stopped and rubbed the stub at his knee where the prosthetic leg connected to his flesh. After a long day like this, even sitting in on congressional hearings, his leg ached in the evening until he removed his friend. He looked at the dragon handle at the top of his cane, a gift from a congressman a couple of years ago, and pondered the events of the day. But before he could think too much on the subject, his contacts approached him from the north. They had met only once before, and there could not have been two more intimidating figures. Both men were good physical specimens, but he had been used to that working around the military in his past. Yet these two, one with a completely bald head and the other with hair to his shoulders like an 80s big hair band member, had the intense stares of men who had not only killed in the past, but who didn't seem to care about having done so. The only thing the Lobbyist knew about them is the fact that they were Slavic and were former intelligence officers.

The Lobbyist felt the hard outline of the 9mm Glock on his right hip under his Armani suit, and he reached into the right pocket of his Ralph Lauren Angora Chesterfield Overcoat to grasp his Smith & Wesson .380 Bodyguard semi-auto handgun. The Glock was too hard to draw with the overcoat. He didn't think he'd need any of his guns, but since his incident in Iraq he had become increasingly cautious. And DC was still one of the most dangerous cities in America.

The men stopped a few feet from him and they both showed their hands, indicating they were unarmed.

Alex, the one with the long black hair, was the first to speak. “Did you see the video on the internet?”

“Afraid so,” the Lobbyist admitted.

“That California congressman. . .how do you say it? Was schooled?”

“More like bitch slapped,” the Lobbyist said.

The long-haired man pulled out a cigarette and offered one to the Lobbyist, who shook his head. Alex lit up and finally let out a long stream of smoke that mixed with his breath from the cold air. “Do you work with that congressman?”

Shrugging, the Lobbyist said, “We might try to influence just about everyone on the Hill depending on the issue.”

“Give that man a few donuts and he will do anything you say,” Alex said and then took a long drag on his cigarette.

For the first time the Lobbyist noticed a long scar along the jaw line of the man with long hair. He could only imagine how the man had earned that cut. Time to get on with the terms. “How is our work coming in the west?”

“The professor?”

“Of course.”

“We are on that like black on a hockey puck,” Alex said, mixing his metaphors.

A bit confused, the Lobbyist said, “So, he's in your possession?”