Authors: J. M. Erickson
It was a warm and beautiful evening. In any other circumstance, Burns would have appreciated it, but there was a job at hand. Burns’s immediate mission was simple: data collection of who was on to him, how much they knew, and most importantly, who was running all the missions. Not just this operation, but all of the operation Burns now recounted. The dates and locations were murky still, but the intelligence, data, objectives, and results were crystal clear. For Burns, the files stolen, the targets killed, the countries destabilized, the civilians caught in the cross fire, all of these facts came back to him. While the images were disturbing, Burns was mostly concerned about something else. He had two opposing feelings that seemed to flood his thinking and entire being. First, Burns felt great regret for his past behaviors. Secondly, after he had absorbed all of the images, thoughts, and feelings, he felt great weight hung from his neck. He felt as if he could barely breathe. These feelings had been so overwhelming that he had thought he was going to fall over in David’s office. Burns remembered telling David that he thought he was part of something important, that he thought he used to protect people from terrorists. As the memories returned, he was partially right. He did protect people in the beginning. But then the superiors that he had trusted had given him orders that were not as clear. Before he knew it, he wasn’t just killing terrorists and combatants. There had been many innocent people as well. And he liked it. Burns was revolted at the thought. He had told David that he had hoped remembering would free him and lift a burden he carried around. He thought he would be rid of an albatross. Instead, he remembered all of his sins and nothing personal about his life. It was as if he had accessed only half of his personal memories—the bad side.
Were there any good memories?
he wondered. Burns suddenly felt betrayed by his superiors.
This won’t stand
, he thought to himself. It was the best thought he had remembered in a long time.
As perplexed as Burns was by these emotions, he followed his target carefully while he kept enough people between them so he could remain invisible.
By the time the attendant got to the second block, he was on the phone again. This time, however, he was more relaxed and slowed his pace. Then he stopped, looked around, and entered a liquor store. Burns suddenly turned to look inside a store window as if he was just another person shopping for something. He waited patiently outside. Burns wondered if he had been identified by the attendant and if his target was now slipping out the back to get the drop on him. But then the attendant was out of the liquor store with what appeared to be wine. Another thirty feet, and he was picking up flowers.
Is he really heading to a date?
Burns wondered.
Burns watched with envious eyes. He did have memories of being with women, but he had no memories of actually getting “the stuff,” such as wine, roses, and chocolates, that went with it. Burns found himself distracted as he wondered why he felt as if there were women in his life before, sex but no closeness. Caulfield’s therapy was working, Burns admitted. He was feeling jealousy and anger for this man he followed and sadness for himself. As Burns focused back on his task of following the target, a thought about why he felt the way he did materialized.
They were women but not relationships,
Burns sadly thought. This was a distinction Burns could make now but hadn’t in the past. In the past, all people were objects rather than something meaningful. What “meaningful” meant was still unclear to him. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to know that Burns’s thinking was profoundly changing.
Was it the brain injury or treatment?
Burns thought to himself as he carefully maintained distance from his target.
“The doctor knows what he’s doing,” Burns said quietly.
The attendant was back on the phone, juggling his packages and searching for his keys as he entered the city’s enclosed garage. This was going to be tricky because now the camouflage of people would be gone. He could only hope the target’s attention was distracted. Burns made a subtle but important change in how he viewed this man. The attendant was not the same guy who had walked him to his appointment about an hour ago; he was not the same person who had asked Burns about his day and said, “Why do you talk to a shrink anyway?” Burns no longer saw the attendant as a person. Burns saw him as a target, a key piece, an access point to get more critical information. The target was fully engrossed in his conversation and did not notice Burns above him in the stairwell. There were other people, but they were thinning out as Burns followed his target to the lowest floor. Burns closed the gap between them as the target finished his conversation and opened the backseat of his car to deposit his cache.
“So are you looking for me?” Burns asked matter-of-factly.
The target suddenly turned, startled, already going for something in his pocket. For Burns, everything sped up and then slowed down. As the target pulled out a collapsible baton and raised it to strike Burns on the head, Burns charged forward, slamming and pinning the target to the door well within the baton’s effective strike zone. Burns hit the target so hard that the baton fell out of his hand. The target attempted to get his arms around Burns’s neck, and Burns’s left arm braced the target’s neck while his right was already planted on the opposing jaw. As suddenly as the struggle started, it stopped. Burns applied a few pounds of pressure and forced the target’s neck and jaw in two different directions. The target’s neck snapped, and his body went limp. Burns watched the body slump. Burns was distracted for a moment. He had not wanted to kill the man; he had wanted information. His reaction was so fast, purposeful, and deadly it seemed to catch Burns off guard. He had killed before, but this bothered him—not that he had lost access to intelligence but that he could kill so quickly and effectively without thinking. His scalp started to itch. The itching seemed to be focused near his scars on his head, his hands, and parts of his arms. The itching was not unbearable, just noticeable.
Burns returned and looked around for any witnesses. There were none. He popped the trunk and picked up the body and then put it in the trunk. In the trunk, there were two suitcases, a briefcase, and a duffel bag. Burns looked in the duffel bag first—dark clothes, gloves, and an array of military fatigues and service coveralls. A smaller bag was in the larger bag, and it was filled with cash, credit cards, and genuine American passports that were blank, not to mention a few Canadian, British, and Irish passports as well. These American passports and all the others would be priceless in the right hands on the black market. As far as this stash of cash, there had to be at least thirty thousand dollars.
One of the suitcases was not a suitcase at all but an oversized, impact-resistant case with a cache of guns and knives. On the first of two levels, there were two large double-action automatic handguns. The smaller semiautomatic would be easier to conceal than the larger semiautomatic handgun. There was also one high-caliber revolver. All the guns were well maintained and meticulously placed in their padded holders. On the second level, there was ammunition for all the guns and two sets of knives. One set was spring-loaded from the side, and the other set was filled with throwing blades. The spring-assisted knives were heavy-duty, and each had points on the handles to shatter windows and cut seatbelts. All the weapons were military-grade, but there were no serial numbers or identifying manufacture information on either guns or knives. Burns took one of the spring-assisted knives and some ammunition for the revolver he now held. Though he initially chose the easier-to-conceal, semiautomatic weapon, he changed his mind for the more reliable revolver with the most stopping power. He eventually decided to take the smaller semiautomatic weapon as well for backup.
The other suitcase had what appeared to be the target’s clothes—business casual and silk shirts and shorts for somewhere tropical. Another section of this suitcase held about fifty thousand dollars neatly arranged in a concealed compartment. All the cash was in small denominations of tens and twenty-dollar bills. Burns closed this up, took the briefcase out of the trunk, and placed it on the ground as he searched the body for the wallet, keys, cell, and any other thing of intelligence value. Once found, he shut the car trunk with the body and luggage and sat behind the wheel of the deceased man’s car. He then opened the briefcase on the passenger seat of the car. The first piece of critical data was an ID that granted the deceased target access to a military airfield. Burns had seen this before—no customs, no checkpoints, and no security. This guy was going with everything in his trunk, no questions asked. There were two cell phones—burn phones that were undoubtedly purchased to be disposable later. There was also a small laptop. Burns decided he would open the laptop later when he could look at its contents and then leave because he was sure that the moment it was turned on, it would send out its GPS location. Burns made the same decision regarding the target’s personal phone; he would wait to open that later. The two burn phones were probably all right because they were the target’s own disposal phones. The other data included files—files on him, a nurse named Samantha Littleton, and Dr. David Caulfield. He knew the nurse’s picture, but there was very little data in the file. They were remarkably basic—date of graduation, transcripts, postgraduate assignments, last employment. Data prior college and nursing school enrollment appeared to be juvenile detention records from age eleven years old to age seventeen, and then nothing. After the veterans’ hospital, she vanished again.
David’s file was thick and filled with a great deal of data, including a picture of him holding a woman’s hand near a residential backdrop. He was smiling and relaxed. It must have been recent, and at his home. “This is your wife,” Burns said out loud. David had spoken of his wife very rarely, but it was clear he cared for her. Suddenly, Burns noticed a smell, a plastic but metallic smell, one that was different from the soldering smell he had experienced in David’s office about sixty minutes ago. Burns looked in the backseat and saw a blanket. Burns lifted the blanket carefully and discovered a narrow piece of wood laid out neatly beside the wine and flowers. There were three spaces hollowed out. In two of the spaces, there were two blocks of explosives. These were the military explosives and not the commercial mining brand. They were wired for detonation, and the triggers were right next to them. There was clearly one set missing. Burns carefully got out of the car to make sure it was not the car that was rigged to explode. Convinced it was not his new ride, Burns began to wonder where the charge was. It only took a second for it to become clear—David Caulfield. Was it in his car or office or home? Burns had to get back to David’s car and make sure it was not rigged to blow up. Why he wanted to ensure David’s safety and even warn the nurse he saw months ago was beyond him.
Burns started the car. He gave the garage attendant the ticket and money and drove back toward David’s building. As Burns approached the building, he saw David driving out of the parking lot. The two federal officers had crates of paper and files with them. Burns drove by and followed David. As Burns drove, he pulled a map out of the glove compartment to get an idea of where he was. The map was already marked with a highlighted route he was now following. It was still even clearer. The route led to David’s home. Because the size of the explosive was too small for an entire house, it would be perfect for a car. The explosive was either in David’s car or somewhere similar. This was the hard part. He needed to follow, watch, and wait while he used his former therapist as bait to lure out the other target. He was troubled by this thought and approach. Using a person for bait was not supposed to bother him. Collateral damage was expected. But for some reason, the fact that it was the doctor who had helped him bothered Burns. Intellectually, this was something he knew he should not and had not cared about before. Burns’s ability to kill an adversary did not bother him; somehow, he was making a distinction between who could be killed and who should not be killed.
Innocent people aren’t objects but have more meaning,
Burns thought to himself. Maybe that was the distinction: His target was far from innocent, laced with malice. Caulfield, that nurse—they were something more meaningful. They were something positive, Burns reasoned. Burns drove in silence.
Samantha appreciated the warning,
and she liked David very much. He had never judged her, and he had gone out of his way to help her go to school and get another profession without asking for anything in return. This assistance without anything in return both confused her and drew her to him. He was a man but did not want her for sex. She knew David was straight, and she liked his wife. Samantha was genuinely appreciative of knowing David. He had opened her eyes to other possibilities.
Maybe there were more people like him than the assholes I know,
she would often think to herself. Unfortunately, he helped her access feelings of remorse, regret, and sadness. While he and other therapists had given her tools to cope with them, her past abilities to compartmentalize her feelings and not feel as much pain had been greatly reduced. She did find that she loved her foster sister, Becky, more though. She even cared about her foster brother, Tony, as well when she hadn’t before. These feelings were good, but they were few. Even going back to prostitution was difficult when it used to be simply a way of making money. Nursing was a good choice for a legitimate profession. But it just didn’t pay well. But Samantha was holding onto to her new dream: make a hundred thousand dollars in three years and buy a house in Willamette Valley in Oregon. Low cost of living. Nice people. Beautiful gardens. She loved gardens. Samantha dreamed of having Becky move out with her for sure. Maybe Tony if he wanted. Her profession would be a means to get to her dream. She would miss David. He gave her hope. She had a dream.