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“Are you going to the rally?” he said. “It’s gonna be great!” She glanced at the flyer. It was a political rally. The singer of a band called “Nation” was going to be the main speaker. Sara had seen him before, on some TV talk show. He was a charismatic young black man who went by the name
Fortress
. She didn’t know too much about the message, but Sara knew the band was popular and the event would probably draw a large crowd.

“Yeah I’ll try,” she muttered. Then she made a mental note to leave work as early as possible, before traffic got too nuts.

At the gym, Sara ran five miles on the treadmill. Afterward, she showered and grudgingly headed to
The Lounge
to meet Jim and Steve. Her plan was to eat nothing but a salad and be back in the office in half an hour. She cringed at the thought of Jim leering at her, groping her like a high school kid every time Steve’s back was turned. The guy was attractive, but only superficially. Too bad she hadn’t figured that out sooner.

Sara had slept with Jim a year earlier. She’d cheated on Scott, and it had almost cost her everything. It made her sick to think of what she’d done.

Sara had learned from that experience. She’d learned that her family meant more to her than anything, and that Scott was better to her than she deserved. It was a mistake Sara could never undo, but thankfully Scott had forgiven her. If she lost him, Sara didn’t know what she would do.

Sara’s mood darkened as she left the gym and headed for the restaurant. She had a slight feeling of vertigo building up, as if the world was twisting sideways. Her vision darkened at the edges and everything went misty. Her thoughts danced out of reach like hummingbirds on the wind. There was something important, something she had been thinking, but what was it?

Sara lurched forward, suddenly unsure of where she was going. Strangers on the sidewalk leered at her and then passed away like ghosts in the fog. She felt herself shrinking, falling into darkness. Her thoughts careened, melted into gibberish.

Sara observed this, watched herself sinking deeper and deeper, but didn’t even consider struggling against it. This was something familiar, something that was supposed to happen. It was like going to sleep at night. All she had to do was let go and be at peace. This was what she was supposed to do… what she’d been waiting for.

Then, like a candle snuffed out in the night, Sara was gone.

A block away from the offices of
Pritchard and Stark
and halfway to her lunch at
The Lounge,
Sara turned and purposefully strode across the square. She wandered through the crowd like a zombie, eyes fixed on some distant goal, almost oblivious to her surroundings.

She slipped into the alley behind Tiffany’s. There, she walked through an open delivery door in the back of the department store and took the staircase straight to the roof. No one made a move to intercept her. If they even noticed Sara, her confident stride and purposeful manner must have deceived them into thinking she belonged there.

The lock on the door to the roof was already broken. Sara simply had to push it open and walk through. There was a gun waiting for her. It was a sniper rifle on a bipod, with a high power scope. It was a high quality weapon, easily worth several thousand dollars. Sara didn’t wonder who would leave such a valuable weapon in such an odd place. She didn’t wonder how she’d ended up there. Sara was a robot. She was a mindless, thoughtless automaton programmed and controlled by an outside intelligence, driven towards a goal that her conscious mind wasn’t even aware of.

Sara lowered herself to the ground, ignoring the sharp edges of the gravel roofing as it bit into her skin. The sounds of traffic and distant sirens drifted up from the city. A procession moved through Union Square and the sound of chanting rose up from the street. Sara waited, arms cradling the weapon, finger resting next to the trigger. She watched the scene play out. She saw the demonstrators rallying, heard them cheer as Fortress finally arrived on the stage.

He was dressed in jeans, boots, and a sleeveless t-shirt. He wore a beaded choker around his throat and aboriginal bracelets on his wrists. He carried a wicked looking B.C. Rich electric guitar, slung low across his pelvis. He was the quintessential rock star.

Fortress played a song to get the crowd riled up, and it worked. They moved in a screaming throng, dancing across the square, arms raised towards the sky. They ran around in circles emulating some sort of aboriginal dance.

When the song was over, Fortress handed his guitar to a roadie and the crowd booed and wailed for more. Fortress laughed and thanked them. Then he spoke.

Fortress had the charisma to work the crowd. His language was elegant, his speech powerful and dangerously riveting. He rallied the audience with a few words about freedom and change and democracy; words Sara might have found stirring if she’d been listening. Sara didn’t hear or understand the words. She was withdrawn and still, only unconsciously aware of the actions taking place in the distant material world.

Sara didn’t make a conscious effort to move her finger to the trigger. It simply happened. Fortress walked across the stage, mic in hand, working the crowd into a frenzy. Then he stopped, and Sara had the perfect shot. All she had to do was squeeze the trigger.

Fate had other plans.

Sara had her left eye closed; her right focused on the crosshairs inside the scope. Her target was in place. The shot was good. But as Sara began to squeeze the trigger, she felt a sharp stinging sensation on her right hand. It distracted her. She glanced up to see a bee, a furry bright yellow creature with black markings. The thing was attached to her, its stinger embedded into the skin of Sara’s right hand.

The creature fought and pulled, struggling to free itself. Sara’s entire focus went to that struggle. She watched it move, and felt the gentle tug against her skin. She heard the faintest tearing sound as the creature’s abdomen ripped apart. Then, as the creature dropped to the ground in its death throes, the venom went coursing through Sara’s bloodstream.

Sara’s vision blurred and her breath came in shallow gasps. She rolled over, clutching at her chest, arms and legs shaking. In her subconscious state, Sara didn’t have the faculties to comprehend what was happening. Had she been conscious, she still might not have understood.

Sara was experiencing anaphylactic shock. She hadn’t even known she had an allergy to bee stings. No one knew. She’d only been stung once in her entire life. It was when she was four years old. Sara had been playing in the backyard when it happened. Her babysitter wasn’t the most attentive teen. She was probably watching TV, or digging through the fridge.

At the time, Sara had only felt a slight tightening in her chest. The next thing she knew, she was waking up in the sandbox. She felt fine. Sara had no idea what had happened, and didn’t even remember the sting. No one ever knew that young Sara had been stung that day, or that she had a dangerous and potentially deadly allergy. Had they known, Sara might not have been on that rooftop.

And Fortress would already be dead.

Chapter 8

“Konrad this is Base, do we have our shooter?”

“Affirmative, Base. Murphy is in place.”

Stryker, Konrad, and the other operatives in Project Mourningbird didn’t bother to disguise their language or names. Their digital radios instantly scrambled the signal with three layers of encryption and embedded the signal in a nearly invisible high-frequency carrier wave. Even the FBI didn’t have the technology to intercept such communications, much less decrypt them. The local authorities would have had a better chance of building a rocket and flying to Mars than eavesdropping on that conversation. Nobody had toys like the OSS. That was one of the perks of being a super-secret black ops organization.

In 1945, after the war, President Harry S. Truman had dismantled the OSS. The agency’s effectiveness was its own demise. The Office of Strategic Services had become too well known, and foreign enemies had already begun to infiltrate and destabilize the USA’s premier intelligence agency. Over the next few years, the intelligence operations were cannibalized, distributed to less controversial agencies. This paved the way for the creation of the CIA, a new breed of intelligence agency with a fancy logo and a PR department.

Only the OSS didn’t die, it simply went underground. The CIA was a smokescreen, a red herring. It was there to give the world something to look at, something to wonder about, something to bitch about. It allowed the OSS and similar black ops programs to do their jobs more effectively, and without the irrational oversight of congressional committees and civil rights watchdogs.

As such, the OSS was beyond the reach of any mere senator, or even the president. Only a very select group of elites had access to the OSS and its resources. 

Commander Stryker pressed the mic button on his headset and spoke: “Konrad it looks like we have a shot. Can you confirm?”

“Yes, sir, it’s a clear shot. Any second now.”

A few moments passed. Stryker scanned the crowd around San Francisco’s Union Square from the safety of the urban reconnaissance vehicle. It was a moving truck outfitted with digital telecommunications, tracking hardware, and wireless internet. The truck had infrared and night vision cameras hidden behind the body panels, with sensors disguised as lights along the roof.

Two operatives manned the hardware. They had patched the computers into state and local law enforcement through wireless signals and the internet. They also had direct access to the SFPD’s mainframe and dispatch servers.

Stryker gazed through the one-way glass, straining, almost eager for the crack of a gunshot. The crowd was going to go nuts. Stryker half-expected a riot. In fact, he was hoping for it. Anything that convoluted the scene and distracted the media would help his cause. It would also encourage the police to close the case as quickly as possible. Stryker was counting on that. He’d gone to great lengths to make sure they’d have all the evidence they needed.

When the gunshot didn’t come, Stryker glanced up at the roofline and tried to pick out the dark form of his shooter. “Konrad, what’s going on up there?”

“I don’t know. Murphy had the perfect shot but she didn’t take it. I think there’s something wrong.”

Stryker glanced at the crowd. Fortress was moving again, wandering back and forth across the stage as he drew the audience into a crescendo. They cheered. The speech was almost over. Stryker knew because he’d read an advance copy. “Konrad, we’ve got thirty seconds.”

“I’m sorry sir, she appears to be unconscious.”

“What! What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Stryker set his jaw.
The best laid plans
, he thought. “Do you have the shot?”

“Affirmative. Shall I take it?”

Stryker paced back and forth down the length of the truck, counting down the seconds. “What’s she doing?”

“She’s moving. She’s not taking the shot. The gun’s on the ground.”

“Konrad, it’s your shot. Take it.”

Three seconds passed before Stryker heard the report of the gunshot echoing through the streets, followed instantly by screams. “Pack it up,” Stryker said into the Com. “Let’s get out of here. Konrad, where’s our shooter?”

“Still on the roof. She’s moving now.”

Stryker glanced at his watch. “The call was supposed to go in two minutes ago. Did we make the call?”

One of the techs, a girl named Lisa, looked up from the computer screen. “I believe the cops are already in the building.”

“We don’t have any choice then. Proceed with Phase Two.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Konrad’s voice came over the Com. “Murphy didn’t take the shot.”

“They won’t notice. They’ve got all the evidence they need.”

Stryker took his headset off and stared out the window as the truck merged into traffic. “Sara Murphy had two jobs to do, kill Fortress and then kill herself. Somebody find out what the hell went wrong!”

Chapter 9

Sara stirred. The sky overhead was deep blue, broken by low hanging clouds. A misty marine layer moved in from the coast, pushing east across the San Francisco peninsula towards the inland bay. An icy wend blew across the rooftop. At that altitude, the wind never stopped.

Sara shivered. She was cold, her body ached, her mind was numb. She pushed herself upright and took a deep breath. She steadied herself against a wave of dizziness.

Sara had an immediate sense of the wrongness of her situation, but her thoughts were muddled, confused. She stood there for a moment swaying, trying to make sense of it all. Her head ached, making it hard to think.

“This isn’t right,” she muttered.

The painful swelling on her hand drew her attention and Sara examined the bright red bruise. She didn’t remember the bee. The last thing Sara remembered was walking down the street along the square. She thought back, recalled stalking out of the gym on her way to lunch. Before that, work. But she couldn’t remember a thing after. Nothing made sense of where she was. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost consciousness and ended up… where was she?

The unmistakable crack of a rifle shot sounded in the distance. It echoed through the canyons of concrete and steel. Sara heard screams and shouting. She leaned over the edge of the roof. A sea of bodies converged on the square, pressing towards the stage where a man’s body lay twitching in a pool of blood. Police in riot gear forced the crowd back. They tried to form a line around the stage. Roadies and bodyguards rushed in, obscuring the body from view.

Fortress,
Sara realized. She remembered the flyer she’d seen earlier. There was going to be a rally… no, there
had been
a rally. But wasn’t that supposed to be later? The timing wasn’t right. Fortress was supposed to be playing a rally that afternoon…

She lost the train of thought as she fought back a wave of nausea. When it passed, she started over. Gradually, the pieces of information came together like objects floating through space. Sara’s mind began to make sense of it. Finally, it dawned on her what had happened. Someone had killed Fortress. That was
his
body lying there on the stage.