His contract was picked up by the CIA in '73. He entered their elite one hundred-man covert combat unit, working deep in-country, most often inside the North. For the unspeakable things he did there, they made him a Major.
He came back in '75 a little bitter, a little morose, but far better put-together than many officers who'd lost far fewer men. He wanted to keep fighting, but the Army needed field officers close to home to help rebuild its gutted morale, they said. They lied. Bitter feuding took place in generals' country over his file, which somehow slipped through the cracks into some subcommittee of the National Security Council, and Aranda himself followed it into a crack in the earth.
He joined SOD, the Army's Special Operations Division, and took control of an operational detachment. One of the unit's first missions was to destroy their own Pentagon records. Aranda no longer belonged to the military. He never did figure out who owned him, then. Or maybe he just didn't remember.
Contrary to what muckraking congressmen and the media would say about SOD, it was not an anarchic frat party, with wild-eyed Vietnam vets drafting their own missions and funding them with blank government checks. Not all the time. The orders came from a back channel in the National Security Council. The missions had very little to do with stopping Communism, and their targets, all too often, were civilian. Major Aranda knew that he ran counter-insurgency ops throughout South America from '79 to '85. He also knew that in the second year, he began to see a CIA therapist after each mission. He knew that he must have successfully completed all of his missions, because he was still alive. Beyond that, he had only a skein of rude holes—lacunae, the therapists called them—to account for six years of his life.
Sometimes, out of nowhere, a taste or a smell, or even the uneasy moments before plunging into sleep, would trigger a blinding vision, and parts of some of them would come back. The Sendero Luminoso splinter-faction UFO cult in the Andes, and the thing they called down from the sky that was not an airplane or a spacecraft, nor any kind of machine at all. The French archaeological team on the Rio Negro, and the ruins they claimed were pre-human, and contained nuclear reactors. The tiny Guatemalan fishing village where the people, horribly deformed from inbreeding and environmental pollution, waded into the sea and never came back: the smell of the ocean after the air strike, the scaled body parts boiling in the waves…
He clearly remembered the day he told them he didn't want to go on any more ops. They were very clumsy trying to kill him, like they thought he wanted to die, like they were doing him a favor. He walked away with twenty million dollars in DoD money, funneled to SOD over the years by a blindly patriotic civilian bursar, and vanished off even the intelligence community's maps.
The lowest rung of the black ladder was the Mission. At last he'd found a command he could live with.
That is, until Bangs's unit had destroyed itself and left a mess for them to clean up, and their war to fight.
When he didn't really hate anything much, any more, he got up and made his way down the length of the cramped fuselage to the other group. Stamping his feet—both to give them fair warning and to work the blood back into his feet—he approached Wittrock's clique. The six civilians and three soldiers were dressed in US Navy flight crew jumpsuits and rain slickers, but the disguise wouldn't hold up to close scrutiny. Most of the civilians were too old by far for any branch of the service, while the soldiers were dark-skinned Latinos with almost purely Indian features. They were Colombian FARC narcoguerillas, the most hardened jungle fighters in the Western hemisphere. Two carried Ingram Mac-10 machine pistols, and they bulged with flak vests and knives and extra clips on bandoliers under their raincoats. The third guerilla stood at the narrow window beside the aft loading door, watching the storm through the scope of a M24 7.62mm sniper rifle that still had some poor Special Forces bastard's blood on it.
"We're landing in less than an hour, Doctor. Tell your friends to stow their toys."
"You speak fluent Spanish yourself, Major," Wittrock said, but shrugged and mumbled something to his FARCs. He studied Aranda with bland condescension. "I trust there's been no
further
change in the flight plan?"
Dr. Wittrock's precious cargo had already cost one good man his life. When they'd gone to the airstrip outside of Bogota, the local cartel had thrown a collective rod over the delay of one of its own shipments, and a scuffle had ensued. Former Navy Lt. Dennis Kinney was shot under his right armpit, between the plates of his flak vest, as he loaded the cargo onto the plane, killing him instantly. More in retribution than self-defense, Aranda's men had taken out sixteen Colombians. The only real comfort Major Aranda could take in his death was that he would not have to inform Lt. Kinney's next of kin, because they had thought him dead for nearly a decade. Such were the terms of recruitment into the Mission.
The C-130 got into the air posthaste and got lost in low clouds, talking its way out of South America only by a lot of lying and radar bluffing. They'd planned to land in Mexico and transfer the cargo to fuel oil trucks, which would carry it across the border. Now, with fast and furious enemies in the drug cartels, they were flying directly into the United States, and Aranda was trying not to think about Wittrock's insane final solution contingency plan.
"Everything's copacetic, Doctor," he finally said.
"There's nothing else we might need to know about," Wittrock said, chidingly, "nothing you've…forgotten?"
"No. We set down at the Kingsville Naval Air in seventy-five minutes. We don't expect any trouble."
Trouble meant they couldn't set down. Trouble meant they announced over military channels that they were carrying nuclear weapons, and flew over heavily populated areas as much as possible, all the way to the final destination. Trouble meant that when they got there, they would detonate the explosives in the deck of the plane, and unleash a cloud of the most toxic substance ever created by man or nature on the target. No one but Wittrock and Aranda knew about the contingency plan.
Major Aranda dug his fingers into his scalp and tried to hold his head together.
"I trust the landing zone will be secure?" Wittrock asked. The venerable bomb-maker looked waxed and wall-eyed, grinding on the dregs of some powerful lab-grade stimulant.
"It's a blessed conduit, Doctor. If anyone would know, I would. And the cargo is worth any amount of risk, right?"
Wittrock smirked, knowing exactly what he meant. It was, he'd said time and again, the ultimate weapon in their war. Once and for all, the Mission would cure the disease that was the fruit of RADIANT. Sure, it was worth a soldier's life. But it had yet to be tested outside of a beaker. "The research is sound. Tests on Dr. Mrachek's tissue samples have yielded lysosome dissolution reactions more complete than we dared hope. Dr. Barrow and the Greens have been pouring poison in your ear about it because they have no alternative. But I believe you trust Dr. Barrow even less than you trust me."
"Doctor, a message was waiting for you at the airfield in Matamoros. They broke radio silence to relay it when we didn't land."
Wittrock betrayed no surprise, merely nodded. "Go ahead."
"Don't you think that was a little stupid?"
"There was relatively little risk involved, and the situation demanded unequivocal certainty. Go ahead with the message, please."
"The package you sent to Washington was delivered. And well-received."
"Excellent," Wittrock made a dismissive gesture and turned to go back to his seat.
Aranda grabbed him by the loose folds of his billowing jumpsuit. "What the hell is this about? And what was so important about it, that you'd risk pinpointing our flight path?"
"The weapon has been field-tested, and the test was a success. Rejoice, Major Aranda. Your lieutenant did not die in vain. This war will soon be at an end, and you can get back to your forest under glass."
The plane dipped horribly, falling a few hundred feet before leveling off in an uneasy truce with the storm. The plunge yanked Wittrock free of Aranda, but the scientist leaned in closer. "You still doubt me, Major. Do you know who founded the Mission?"
Aranda, who knew more than most the value of not knowing some things, only shook his head.
"I did. He was my friend, and a mentor, both to me and to Darwin, whom you did know. He was the most brilliant scientist at the Manhattan Project, and do you know what they did with him when he'd given them all he could? They murdered him in cold blood, and wiped his name from all the records. Your soldiers don't have a monopoly on sacrifice, Major."
Wittrock sat down with his back to Aranda. The FARC guard perched atop the cargo smiled gold nuggets and made a scat-gesture with his rifle.
Aranda turned and swung from sling to canvas sling along the cabin to where his men sat. He busied himself with helping them suit up in civilian garb and sorting their papers and photo ID's. They huddled to wait for descent when a salvo of gunfire came from the aft end of the plane.
"
Buenos noches, Estados Unidos!"
the FARC sniper screamed.
Aranda's men got to their feet and started to rush him, but Aranda grabbed and dragged them back. The FARCs on top of the cargo watched them with guns out. It would be mutual slaughter, at best. He put on his headset and hailed the pilot. "Bre'r Bear, what's under us?"
"No-man's land, Bre'r Fox. Ass-end of Texas, on final approach. What's going on back there?"
"Little cokehead air rage, Bre'r Bear. Nobody's hurt. Steer us clear of houses, though, okay?"
"Roger that, out."
And so, despite Major Aranda's best efforts, the Mission re-entered the United States shooting.
~7~
Cundieffe was awakened just before five AM in his room at the Georgetown Suites. He thought it was his regular wake up call a few minutes early, but was startled by a strange voice.
"He's coming to get you."
"What?" His heart skipped a beat as he fumbled for his glasses. It was one of those moments when you wake up from a sound sleep, but you're sure you're still dreaming. He couldn't remember what he'd just dreamt, but as he rubbed his eyes and looked again at the clock, he knew that someone had been chasing him. Someone who could not be escaped, because he looked down out of the sky and out of the eyes of every living creature. But that was crazy. Why should he dream of someone chasing
him
?
"Agent Cundieffe? Are you there?" It was Assistant Director Wyler's secretary, June McNulty.
"Yes, I'm sorry, Ms. McNulty, I just woke up, that's all."
"This isn't a scheduled appointment, Agent Cundieffe. The Assistant Director requires your attendance at an emergency briefing at the Cave Institute."
Good night! "How much time do I have?"
"Five minutes, barring traffic. Do be ready to go by then, Agent Cundieffe. Assistant Director Wyler was emphatic."
He thanked Ms. McNulty and hung up, clambered out of bed and into one of the suits in the closet. He swallowed a handful of vitamins and chased them down with a carton of orange juice from the minibar. He noticed the minibar was short one bottle of Bacardi Silver rum, and made a mental note to challenge its addition to his bill. He slipped on an overcoat and a wool knit scarf, brushed his teeth and rinsed with the special prescription anti-thrush mouthwash from his own personal toiletry kit, no single-serving Scope, thank you very much. His hair was too short and too thin to mount much resistance, and a few seconds' combing tamed the few uncooperative strands into place.
He looked at himself in the mirror then, really
looked
. It was an exercise he'd perfected as a child at his first year of elementary school, and he credited it with sparing him the daily beatings that were dealt out to far less geeky looking kids. He tried to see himself through the eyes of all the different types of people he'd encounter in the day ahead. He understood local cops, federal officials, solid citizens and criminal minds of all types, just as he'd understood bullies, disaffected teachers and petty-minded administrators. For some, he learned to look like a good citizen, an inept dupe or a trustworthy instrument, but for most he'd been merely invisible. He looked and looked, but he could not imagine what might lie behind the eyes of the group of people who would look at him this morning.
He supposed this was about the Storch assassination, the report for which had dropped into a black hole. It was remarkable writing a report which he knew would never find its way into the ocean of FBI data, that there would be no official investigation, no trial, no ripples of public panic and outrage. For the government, there were visible signs of strain at trying to keep this crime, like the others, a secret. But for him there was an unaccustomed surge of excitement at the prospect of solving it. If all crime could be investigated and prosecuted in secret, out of the meddling circus of the public arena, how much more efficient would the execution of justice be? Indeed, how much healthier would the average American mind be, without the morbid escapism of daily media bloodbaths and sensationalist entertainment trash that glamorized violent crime?
As for the murder itself, there was an almost preternatural lack of facts. According to a preliminary autopsy performed by a Mule physician at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Storch was struck by three shots from a high-powered rifle at a distance of no greater than fifty yards, given the explosive damage done to his body. This meant that the assassin had to be up in a tree in the park, or in the line of cars across the street, all of which had been thoroughly searched by the soldiers who contained the area. Which meant that the assassin probably
was
one of the soldiers who closed off the area. So far they had found nothing, not even the bullets which struck Storch. There was nothing in the loading dock, nothing in his body. The posterior damage done by the shots was determined to have been caused by explosive gas, suggesting that the bullets detonated within him, but there was no trace of metal or gunpowder, only an unidentified chemical residue which the pathologist speculated had been the bullet itself, and which had triggered the violent chemical reaction that killed the prisoner. Remembering the smoke and bubbling foam pouring out of Storch as he wandered, hollow-headed, out onto the sidewalk, Cundieffe eagerly awaited the tox screens and chemical analysis he'd ordered on his own sample of Storch's blood.