Jack Coughlin - An Act of Treason

If I do this, I will have to remove the hood and expose myself. Right now, none of them realize that I’m an American. Why doesn’t someone get on this kid? It’s not that hard. He made his decision, stood up, and slowly began to retreat. The rest of them began to drift away. The boy was dead, and there were other people needing help. Live people.

A hand grabbed his, and he looked down. The woman had her daughter wrapped in an arm and was clinging to Kyle with all the strength she could muster. She called loudly to him, “ Please! Please help my son!”

At the sound of the English language, the other men stopped in their tracks and looked back at the mother, the little girl, the unconscious boy, and the man in the gas mask. Swanson knew it was over. The disguise was ruined. Fight or flight, now… or stay and help.

“Okay,” he said, dropping his helmet, peeling back the hood and goggles, and throwing them away. “I’ll do what I can.” The men were moving closer, forming a circle. “Tell them to stand back while I help the boy,” he told the woman, and she barked at the others. Kyle rummaged around in the nylon kit again, grabbed the CPR kit, and tore it open to reach the little plastic dome and tube. He positioned the mask over the boy’s face, tightened the elastic strap for a snug fit, and began the process of resuscitation, alternating blowing into the tube and massaging the chest with powerful pressure from his crossed hands.

Time became irrelevant as he repeated the process, time and again, pausing only to feel the pulse. Something was blocking the passage. He pulled off the mask and rolled the boy over, hauling the child against his own chest and wrapping his arms around him. Once, twice, he pulled in suddenly and hard in the Heimlich maneuver, then a third time, and the boy gagged with a deathly sour groan and vomited a stream of mucus and dirt and a couple of small stones.

Swanson laid him down again and resumed the CPR, and within a minute the kid’s eyes clicked open, dark and surprised, and he started hauling in air to fill his lungs. The woman screamed in wonderment and grabbed the boy in a tight hug, calling to Kyle, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Swanson sat back on his heels, exhausted. Several of the men clapped their hands and patted him on the back.

Kyle slowly raised his hands and placed the palms on his head. It was a new game now, back to being a Marine. Take a deep breath, stare directly ahead without expression, make no sound, and act totally unafraid. They were going to do whatever they were going to do, and if he had to die in this place, so be it. They would never see him scared.

It took only a moment before someone knocked him on the head with a rifle butt and he toppled over, seeing flashes of colors in the pain. They would be brave now and close in as a pack to have their fun, so cover up. He brought his ankles and knees together hard, ducked his head into his arms, and rolled into a tight ball as the first kicks slammed into his kidneys and back, then more rifle strikes pounded his arms and legs and head, and cuts opened and blood flew out and there was a lot of unintelligible noise and the woman screamed some more, her pleas keening over the curses of the men who were blaming him for everything that had happened on that awful day, and Swanson could do nothing but take the beating and let it all flow over him. He kept hoping for the black sea of unconsciousness but could not find it.

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

J ANETTA J ONES ADJUSTED THEred-rimmed glasses that perched near the tip of her nose. A thin African American woman with twenty years in the CIA administrative branch, she was a pleasant co-worker but slow to warm up to others. Everybody in the building was that way, so it had come as a surprise to her when she became friends with Lauren Carson. She wanted to buy Lauren a drink and have some girl talk. She was surprised when she found Lauren sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, looking lost.

Jones went into the office, closing the door behind her. “Are you okay, Lauren? You should be celebrating, girlfriend. Letter of commendation going in your file for bringing those prisoners back is a big deal. I’m buying you a drink tonight.”

Carson pushed herself up straight, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a small mirror. “I look like crap,” she said. The eyes were serious.

“Right,” Janetta said. “Most normal women would sell their favorite shoes to look as good as you do on your worst day. What’s going on?”

Lauren dropped the mirror back and closed the drawer. Time for some major cosmetics. “I’ve just been summoned for an emergency internal review. Since I’ve already been debriefed about the prisoners, I guess it has to be about those explosions in Pakistan. No word from the team that went in yet. I don’t know anything about what happened over there.”

Janetta Jones had been around the Agency too long to try to dig for details. Jim Hall was probably involved in it somehow. Man about to retire goes off on a secret mission and gets himself involved in a crisis. Lauren, being his deputy, could catch some fallout. Then there was the emotional component. Lauren cared about Jim, and their affair had been no secret. It was impossible to keep that kind of secret within the walls of the CIA. “We’re in a risky business,” she observed.

Lauren was happy that Janetta had come in. The woman was almost an oracle, a walking encyclopedia of internal CIA mechanics.

“Just routine, so don’t worry about it. I’ve seen it many a time before. Many a time,” Jones said in a slow, soft voice. “I’m sure that it is just a SODD investigation. When something bad happens almost anywhere in the world, the CIA is usually held responsible until we can prove Some Other Dudes Did It. Getting blamed for everything is as much a part of this building as the elevators and the stones. Just who we are. What time is your interview?”

“Tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I was told to make sure that the door to Jim’s office is locked and that a special team will be sent along to secure and seal it until we hear from him. Nobody goes inside.”

Janetta smiled. “So let’s go do that. I’ll witness for you. Then you go fix your face and we’ll get out of here and go chase men.”

Lauren stepped from behind her desk, picked up her purse, and glanced sideways at the glass window to check her reflection. “I’m a mess.”

Janetta Jones rolled her eyes and turned away. “Yeah. Hideous. I’ll make you an appointment with one of the company’s plastic surgeons.”

ISLAMABAD

G ENERAL N AWAZ Z AMAN OFthe Pakistani intelligence service said, “We have captured an American assassin and killed his partner.” Then he tapped the spent embers from his cigar in an ashtray on his desk. The smoke coiled gray above it. His round face remained calm, but his eyes drilled into those of Daniel Silver, the SAC, or special agent in charge, of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s huge office in Islamabad.

Silver carefully measured his response. He had been so tightly focused on the massive explosions that had rocked the city that he had heard nothing of this. “I do not understand, General.”

“It is simple, Special Agent Silver. Your country decided to come across the Afghan border once again without authorization in pursuit of the Taliban.” He pointed out the window of his office. “Look and see what you have caused.”

“That is an absurd accusation, sir.”

“Perhaps, but it is also true.” The general opened a file on his desk. “The man we have captured has been identified as Kyle Swanson, apparently a United States Marine sharpshooter of some renown. The dead one has not yet been identified.” His eyes rose again to stare at Silver.