Terror Bounty (2 page)

The Prince George’s County rural tier was
Rick’s favorite hunting ground, mostly because it wasn’t too far from home.

He loved walking through the woods with
uncle Peter, but the older man really was the one who was an expert when it
came to ruffled grouse. It wasn’t the most common bird in the area but it
offered a challenge which was part of the thrill.

And there was indeed a thrill about
hunting this particular game. Contrary to other birds, it was notoriously
difficult to hunt. The head was quite small compared to its body and it behaved
like no other. Rick had been hunting these for 15 years and he still hadn’t
mastered it.

He parked his SUV on the side of the
gravel road and stepped out into the morning air which was chilly in spite of
his warm cammo gear. He wasn’t sure why he had come. He wasn’t in the mood for
this today. A week had gone by since the terrorist attack in New York and there
had been no progress in the investigation.

Still, this wasn’t even why he was in a
bad mood.

He popped the trunk open and reached for
his plastic gun case. From this he retrieved his Remington 870 12-gauge
shotgun. It was black and had been his father’s. He thought about him every
time he held the weapon in his arms.

Before he turned maudlin, a red Toyota pulled
up behind him. A man in his 50s and dressed exactly like him came out.

“Hey, kid. Been here long?”

He barely gave a glance to his uncle
Peter. Instead Rick loaded his gun with number 8 birdshot, pushing shell after
shell inside.

“Are you mad at your weapon, Rick? You’re
doing this faster than a Marine.”

“Didn’t wake up happy, Uncle Pete.”

“Okay,” the older man said while he went
to his trunk to get his own gear. “You ran out of coffee or something?”

“It’s way worse.”

Rick went to his uncle’s car and opened
the back door. A gray Weimaraner dog jumped out before running circles around
him, her tail wagging as if Rick was the most important person in the world. He
crouched and patted her head for a moment.

“Hey, girl. How’ve you been? Miss me?”

Rick noticed that his uncle was staring
at him, clearly waiting for an explanation about the sour mood. When there wasn’t
one, he nodded for them to go into the woods.

For the next ten minutes they traipsed
through the dead leaves and fallen branches, keeping a lookout for the evasive
ruffled grouse. Even the dog kept quiet, ready to dart away to retrieve some
birds.

“I think we’ll find some that way,” Peter
said softly.

He led the way but Rick didn’t follow.
What he did instead was reach inside his jacket and produce a folded letter. He
unfurled it and smoothed out the paper.

“Rick, what are you doing?”

His nephew acted as if he hadn’t heard
him. He went directly to a spruce and shoved the letter against the trunk where
a branch was missing. It was gummy enough that it held in place.

On top of the page, right in the middle,
was the seal of the FBI.

Peter sighed as he noticed it. “Jesus,
not again.”

With a grunt of acknowledgment, Rick
walked back five yards and aimed his gun at the letter. He fired straight at
it, pumped another round, and fired again. He emptied the gun on the paper
until absolutely nothing was left.

“Feel better now, Rick?”

“Third rejection, do I get a toaster or
something?”

“Can’t you buy yourself a shredding
machine like a normal person? You scared the living shit out of me. And you
just made sure we won’t get any birds today.”

Rick shrugged. “I’m getting seriously
pissed about this, Uncle Pete.”

For three years Rick had been applying to
the FBI Academy and he was always rejected.

“What was their excuse this time?”

“Physical fitness. Seems the course I
took last summer on police sciences didn’t help after all.”

“Shit, you know how it is,” Peter began. “In
this day and age, the Bureau is looking for people with language skills.
Russian, Arabic, Chinese, whatever the hell they speak in Afghanistan. It’s not
about bank robberies anymore. It’s about bankers and terrorists.”

“Doesn’t family count, Uncle Pete? You’re
FBI, dad was FBI, can’t they see that I’d be a good asset?”

The old man had no easy reply to this and
simply grinned tightly.

“I’m sorry, son. I’ll try to pull more
strings next time.”

“Yeah,” Rick said with a snort.

He reloaded his shotgun and really wanted
to shoot something else again.

The one-bedroom apartment was far from
impressive, Rick thought. He could afford better, bigger. He definitely could
stand to be located closer to work. The place was located above a vintage
clothing boutique – a fancy term for thrift store – which meant it catered to
hipsters. He’d heard enough discussions about kale to last a lifetime.

But living here was fine for the time
being. It was easy to keep clean and he didn’t have to go out of his way to
decorate it. He had a leather couch in the living room, where he was lounging
right now, an IKEA dining set, a big-screen TV, he didn’t need much more.

He was lonely though. He didn’t date much
anymore but he’d been looking forward to meeting Angie Miller for the first
time in years. Geez, he remembered her as a goody-two-shoes in school,
certainly not on his radar as far as hook-up prospects were concerned.

Time changed you, he decided. Maybe as
you got older, more mature, your idea of an interesting person evolved. The
attack, Angie dying, it was putting things in perspective for him. Life was too
short to spend it doing something you didn’t enjoy.

That’s all he’d been thinking about since
coming back from the hunting trip. He had removed his boots and coat but was
otherwise still wearing the camouflage gear. He was sipping a Sam Adams while
desperately trying to think about something else.

He absentmindedly surfed channels on TV
and found nothing interesting. How could he subscribe to 250 stations and find
nothing to watch? Sports highlights were getting repetitious and he wasn’t
interested in Australian rugby. What was that, a reality show about a towing
company repossessing cars? Really?

He found people gushing over homes they
would probably not make an offer on, kids baking while talking as if their
parents had made them rehearse a speech. There was a show featuring some guy
promising to tell you about how aliens built the pyramids, but
only
after the commercial break. Rick turned off the TV when he spotted a
Kardashian.

He picked up his iPad and browsed through
his collection of books. There was one novel he had purchased a few days back
during his lunch break at work but he hadn’t started it yet. He read the
synopsis and ultimately decided it was too heavy a read for tonight.

“Shit…”

He was bored and depressed. He looked out
the window and saw cars’ headlights everywhere. People were going places, doing
stuff. Why wasn’t he?

He put the beer and the tablet down on
the coffee table and reached for his phone. He scrolled through the contacts
and smiled when he came across a name he hadn’t thought about in a while. He
hit the Send button.

“Albarn,” the gruff voice answered after
the first ring.

“You always answer this serious, like you’re
on a mission?”

There was a soft chuckle. “Life is my
mission, Travis. How are you, man?”

“I’m lonely and looking for somebody to
cuddle with.”

“So you called me?”

“Actually, I was wondering if you could
give me your sister’s number.”

“Blow me.”

Both men laughed.

“Are you doing anything right now? You’re
at Little Creek, right?”

“I’m stateside indeed. What do you got in
mind? You wanna meet up?”

“Yeah, I’m feeling like a long drive and
a cold drink.”

“See you at the usual place then.”

~  ~  ~  ~

The usual place was a dive in Richmond,
Virginia. The bar had switched owners half a dozen times since Rick had been
going to this joint and there had been almost as many name changes. Now it was
called Ram It In and because of that it was quite popular with the student
crowd from nearby Virginia Commonwealth University– the school team was called
the Rams.

That’s where he had met Titus Albarn.
They had been roommates freshman year and had remained friends ever since even
though their paths had diverged greatly.

It took two hours for Rick to drive down
and by the time he entered the place he was extremely thirsty. The decor was a
cross between sports bar and flea market and even though he had changed into
jeans and a black T-shirt he felt overdressed. Bro country music was blaring
through the overhead speakers but none of the 50 young people present seemed to
mind.

He was about to get a beer from the
pretty barmaid when he spotted a black man wearing a blue Navy Working Uniform.
There was a full pitcher of beer on the table and he waved him over.

“How you been, man?”

They embraced and clapped each other on
the back.

“It’s good to see you, Titus.”

“You too! How long’s it been, six months?”

Titus poured Rick a beer and topped off
his own glass once they were both sitting down again. Since Richmond was the
halfway point between Washington and Norfolk, this was where they generally
met. When his friend was in the US anyway, which wasn’t often.

Rick glanced at the gold trident of the
Navy SEALs on his chest. As a special operator, part of one of the deadliest
units in the world, Petty Officer 1st Class Titus Albarn wasn’t frequently home.
Then again, that’s how he liked it. He had dropped out of college before
getting his degree so he could enlist and chase bad guys around the world.

They did the usual empty chitchat for the
first beer, catching up. Titus couldn’t reveal much about his work because most
of his missions were classified, so he talked mainly about the girls he dated
and the ones he wished he did. Rick didn’t talk about his work much either,
only because it was boring as hell.

“So, what’s on your mind, white boy.”

Rick shrugged. “Stuff, life.”

“Well somebody call the alarm company
because my bullshit siren is going off. You didn’t just drive down two hours –
made
me
drive two hours – just because you’re worried about stuff, life.
Come on, lay it on me. What’s her name and how long ago did you knock her up?”

“Shut up,” Rick said with a snort before
draining his beer.

“I will not shut up. If you wanted me to
shut up you should’ve brought me to a strip club instead. There I can shut up
and enjoy the show. What is it, man? Tell me.”

“It’s just…”

Rick’s voice trailed off. He had called
his friend and came here because he’d been lonesome but until now he hadn’t
realized he actually wanted to talk.

“What is it, Ricky.”

Titus brought his chair closer and
ignored the pretty young women who were looking at him, hoping he would make
his move. He didn’t, his attention was on Rick.

“The attack in New York, it hit pretty
close to home.”

“You were there?”

“No,” Rick replied dismissively. “I was
on the phone with this girl. Angie Miller, I went to high school with her. I
found her on Facebook a few weeks back, we started chatting. I was hoping we’d
go to our high school reunion together.”

“Okay, and?”

“And the bomb blew up when I was on the
phone with her. She was there, in the building.”

“Oh shit! I’m so sorry, brother.”

Rick nodded but kept his eyes on his
drink. “It’s all right, it’s not like I really knew her or anything. We weren’t
dating, it probably wouldn’t have worked out with each other. It’s just… I don’t
know.”

“Yeah, I lost people too,” Titus said
soberly. “Even guys you don’t know all that well, guys you don’t even like,
when they go it hits hard.”

“It’s just so weird, I don’t know how to
feel. Plus it’s giving me flashbacks.”

“Your dad?”

Rick refilled his glass and brought it to
his lips before nodding again. Three years had gone by since he’d lost his
father.

“It’s making me realize how shitty my
life is. This, my job. I got rejected by the FBI Academy again, like that’s a
fucking surprise.”

“Again? Sorry, man.”

“It is what it is.”

“You should enlist, it’s not too late.”

“I hate the water, Titus.”

“I could get fragged for saying this but
you don’t have to be a squid. I hear that the Army isn’t half bad. I mean, it’s
not the Navy, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the Air Force either.”

Rick smiled. “Thanks but no thanks, crew
cuts don’t go with my complexion. No, I guess I already have something in mind.
It’s crazy but it’s something I think I need to do.”

“All right, tell me.”

Gaining confidence from having revealed
his secret, Rick told him.