Authors: J. M. Erickson
Andersen took another moment to reflect on the report.
How the hell did you make it out there?
he wondered. Andersen returned to the document. He readjusted the size of the picture to read it better.
It wasn’t until the Red Cross was sending Burns home to recover from head injuries at the veterans’ hospital that the foreign intelligence agency caught wind and dispatched its own team. By then, though, there was too much of a paper trail to make Burns disappear. And at the time, Burns seemed to have lost his memory. Initially, the report stated that Burns’s recovery was critical because of his “ability to recall critical data relating to security protocols and possible agency breach.” The report finally ended with clear conditions and mandates: “Should a full recovery become apparent, his condition may need to be monitored. If it is apparent that Burns is compromised, he will need to be terminated for national security. All those in contact with him will need to be assessed for next steps.” The document was signed by Chairman Daniels. The man responsible for handling the details of the “Burns care” was a Deputy Director T. Webber.
Andersen could not believe that this was even possible, let alone written down somewhere in an official summary report. But then these classified files were never supposed to see the light of day.
“
Fuck!
” That was truly the only word that captured the severity of this secret. If this ever got out, the American public and its allies would be really pissed. Who could Andersen trust with this knowledge? Burns knew he had put Andersen in a bad position. The truth could get him killed.
For ten minutes, Andersen sat quietly as he listened to the kids and his wife preparing for bed. As Andersen sat with his wife’s phone in his hand, he had an idea. He started looking for the icons that would show any recent pictures. When he found them, he started to flip through them until he found the pictures of her party on May 1. It only took him a few moments to see what he feared. In various pictures, there were many different people and other nurses, but there were at least five pictures that had one nurse—a very shapely woman with raven black hair whose face was either turned away or obscured. Laura had complained, Andersen remembered, that she had not gotten a “good picture” of the nice nurse, a Ms. Smith who assisted her when she fell suddenly ill and then gave her a ride home. Andersen was now thoroughly sick. The angel of death had given his wife a ride home and had been in his house for a few hours before hell had rained down on everyone.
They were in my house as my children and I slept
, Andersen thought.
Burns was a very dangerous man. This was something that would hang around Andersen’s neck. He was no longer interested in his single-malt scotch.
Two months went by
before Andersen and Helms met again at Andersen’s office in North Andover. The Fourth of July festivities were ready to move ahead, and security was at an all-time high. In light of what had happened two months prior, being on alert was not an act of paranoia but simply the new normal in the Merrimack Valley.
Andersen had already told Cratty and Helms about the phone conversation he had had with Burns and the clear message Burns had wanted conveyed. Andersen was sure to deliver it loud and clear. Andersen did not share with Cratty the document he had seen on his wife phone, but he had shown it to Helms. Helms had taken the phone and run it through the magic of forensics and confirmed the image was indeed real. The plan was for Andersen to keep his wife’s phone at all times as it was probably the only direct line Burns and his team would have with someone with whom they could communicate in case “hell rained down.” Laura had been fine with it. She had wanted a new phone anyway.
Helms had called earlier one day to “go out to lunch” with Andersen, which was code for “we need to talk.” Once he was in Helms’s car, it became clear that they were heading to a small town just down the road called Wakefield.
As they turned down a quiet neighborhood street, they saw plenty of well-maintained, split-level homes with some cottage-style residences thrown in to add variety to the planned neighborhood. However, it was the small ranch house with an attached garage that caught Andersen’s attention. While the style of the home was different from the surrounding ones, it was the overgrown lawn with dead grass and dying, misshapen shrubs that really stuck out. While other homes had the maximum of two barrels of garbage and recycling out for pickup, this house had garbage bags of all shapes and sizes left out. There was also a large pile of furniture put out as well. The furniture was far from used and damaged; it was good furniture that had just been thrown out. To add to the disheveled nature of the house, the mail had piled up, and unread newspapers had simply been cast aside. Flower boxes were all dead, and there were no signs of life. Helms knocked on the door as Andersen patiently waited for a response and wondered who the hell was living here. Helms hadn’t told him in the car; Helms liked surprises. Andersen didn’t mind surprises too much. The door flew open, and there stood Davis in sweats, a tank top stained with either sweat, beer, or both, and her .45 automatic weapon just out of visual range behind her.
“Well, well, well … to what do I owe the honor of your company?” Davis asked. She didn’t wait for a response but simply walked back into her house.
Well, this is a surprise
, Andersen mused.
The house smelled of sweat and heat, and the room was stuffy without air-conditioning. Andersen looked around to see what was going on.
“Air-conditioning out?” Helms asked.
“It works. I like it hot and dark. Helps me when I’m lifting,” Davis responded.
While there was a chair, a radio, and a television in the living room, there was also a set of weights and a bench, two mats, two dartboards converted to throwing star and knife targets, and a heavy bag recklessly drilled into the ceiling. Andersen remembered the first dumpy apartment he had rented when he had joined the force and before he had gotten married. His apartment, however, had been significantly better than this shit hole. Even his barracks in the service had been nicer.
“I like what you’ve done with the place—early gym era with a hint of self-pity,” Andersen had to say as he continued looking around, taking in the sights, smells, and heat.
Early in the week, Helms told Andersen that Davis had been held out to dry for the breach and had been put on “indefinite administrative leave” pending the conclusion of the internal investigation. The conclusion of this type of investigation would mean capturing the ghost Burns. It had been two months of being on leave, but Davis wasn’t wasting away or catching up on her sleep. She obviously was not working on keeping her house up. When Andersen saw her last, he was impressed with her physical prowess to go toe-to-toe with a guy like Burns. For all intents and purposes, Burns was the operations center’s devil incarnate, and it had been Davis who had nearly beat him, both physically and tactically. She might have been the only person to come close to stopping him; however, she hadn’t, and her bosses were making her an example. Davis was taking another approach. She was conditioning herself for a rematch. She was leaner now, and she actually seemed taller. Her muscles were well defined, and Andersen was positive there were weapons all over the house. He pitied the person who might break in here.
“What can I do for you, boys?” Davis asked as she put her handgun on the floor and got back on her bench to press what Andersen figured had to be more than her own weight and then some.
It was Helms’s show, so he took the lead on this as Andersen found a clean wall to lean on. “I have a reconnaissance mission of sorts that only us three can be involved—”
Davis bolted right up from the bench and interrupted frantically, a finger to her lips, making a
shhhh
sound indicating possible listening devices.
“Already checked three times in the last two days. Your boys pulled the bugs out three days ago, and my people swept the place already,” Helms said.
Davis shook her head. “Great. I got two agencies looking at me.”
“Actually three. National security was here the first four weeks but figured they would let us handle it,” Helms informed her.
“Great. I don’t even have to leave home to get a date,” Davis responded as she pressed a set with twenty reps.
“I am impressed, Davis,” Helms continued. “You navy types don’t strike me as ‘lean, mean, fighting machines.’ Even if you were Office of Navy Research and Development.”
“I’m expanding my boundaries,” was Davis short response.
After Davis did another quick set, Helms took out three folded papers and handed them to her. Andersen knew it was a copy of the images that Burns had shown him two months prior. Andersen was not exactly sure what Helms was planning, but for whatever reason, he did trust the marine.
Davis read the document. Then she went back to the beginning and read it again. Andersen was beginning to analyze Davis; he was sure he would be spending some time with her. He already knew she would dedicate herself to a job. As she read, she walked around in small circles like she had energy she needed to burn off. Andersen also noticed she was fiddling with a necklace. Andersen looked carefully at it, and it just didn’t seem to fit.
It doesn’t fit her. It’s too delicate for her,
he thought.
“You confirmed the authenticity of these images?” Davis asked.
Helms nodded.
“So that’s why he was so pissed,” Davis said. Davis sat down on the bench and took a drink of something in a water bottle.
Water? No. Protein drink more likely.
For a moment, Andersen glimpsed either softness or understanding. Probably understanding. Davis did not seem the soft and warm type.
But then she has that necklace. A crucifix, no less,
Andersen thought.
Helms took the only chair in the room and started his briefing with a question. “So Davis, if you were running the operations center and this breach occurred on your watch, what would you do?”
Without hesitation, Davis took another swig and answered, “It did happen on my watch. But to answer the question directly, I would hunt them all down and kill them all. Nothing personal. Just business. I would want to make sure all the secrets and loose ends were taken care of. The fact that there are four of them probably in different parts of the world and there are dead-man switches on the critical data makes it more difficult … so if something happens to one or all of them, the classified information gets out, which greatly complicates things.”
“Two women, one child, a blind man, and a former good guy, not exactly an elite task force or a group of crazed terrorists,” Andersen had to say.
Davis just stared at Andersen. Helms pressed, “But would you just let them go and hope Burns keeps his word and everyone on his team stays in good health?”
“No, I would first locate them all. Watch them for a period of time. Assess their strengths and find patterns and then create a plan to either simply contain them or take them all out at the same time while getting all the information at the same time. That would be the plan.”
“Could Cratty do that?” Helms asked.
“No. She would need a team that she could trust, and after the past weeks of hearings, I am sure she doesn’t trust anyone now.”
Andersen gave Davis a nonverbal cue to elaborate.
“Before all this shit went down, Cratty was designated to get a promotion to deputy director. Burns and his team ended that. She had some personal family matters that happened too, but it was the security breach that ended her shot. The director, Webber, was busted down to deputy director for being MIA when the Merrimack Valley burnt up. He is a vengeful, pissed-off, little man who will make it his business to get rid of Cratty, especially since I’m gone. He needs a whipping girl.”
Davis paused for a moment and reflected before she went back to the original question. “But there are at least three other people who could have the natural skills and talent … and if I had a team I trusted, I could get them too. Chairman Daniels will certainly supply all resources to bury Burns and his team. What are you getting at, Helms?” Davis asked.
Andersen could see that Helms wanted to carefully articulate his words because he needed Davis and she could smell bullshit from miles away.
“I know you think that Burns destroyed your career. You got in his way, and he neutralized you. I’m surprised he didn’t kill you, but you were not his target. He minimized collateral damage and focused on saving his people. He could pull the trigger on us at any point but made it clear that if we leave him alone, they will live and let live. I think that he will live up to his side of the bargain, but I am convinced our team won’t. The problem I have with all of this is why would we kill our own citizens for telling the truth after we fucked up their lives?”
Andersen understood exactly what Helms was saying. As much as Andersen hated being played and used, he had a deep-seated admiration for Burns, David, and all of them. If the tables had been turned and he had been in Caulfield’s or the Littleton sisters’ position, Andersen would like to think he could do the same things to save his loved ones.
“And another thing,” Helms continued, “what the fuck else has ‘our team’ done? What other secrets and dirty operations have we done? I fought in two theaters of war to protect the Constitution of the United States. And for what?”
Davis was pacing again, though she had shifted from circles to back-and-forth movements. She was now moving from corner to corner of the room, a throwing knife in her hand.
“So what do you want me to do,” Davis finally asked.
Helms leaned forward on his chair and looked Davis right in the eyes. “I want to find Burns and his team first and provide support for them … before our team makes its move. I want you, me, and Andersen to be in play to assist or deter. I want Burns to know we aren’t all assholes and that there are at least three people he can trust to keep innocent people alive. If we can do this, maybe we can bring him in from the cold, get all the information back, clear him and his people, and set the record straight. You know … do the right thing. From what you know about Burns before he went rogue, was he good?”