Jason Pinter - The Darkness

He refused any sort of reward, and drove off with the plain smile of a Good Samaritan.

Amanda, on the other hand, had forgotten her purse at a bar just a few weeks ago, and returned home later that night to find no less than twenty-five hundred dollars in charges racked up. Ironically they were not at jewelry or electronic stores, the bastion of people looking to make a quick splurge with a stolen card, but rather from places like

Home Depot and Ace Hardware. A sign that whoever had taken her bag was way behind on their home renovations.

A small thing perhaps, but I considered it a sign of the times. For years, after the mayor and cops had cleaned the city up, New York was known as one of the safest big cities in the world. Like any city, of course you needed a modicum of common sense, the knowledge that despite this change if you wandered into the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time you were playing Russian roulette.

But now, New York didn’t feel quite as safe. There was a constant tension, a thickness in the air, that something combustible could ignite at any moment. There were too many people out of work, too many people unable to afford their homes, too many businesses hanging on for dear life.

And when a city is being stretched like a piece of taffy, just the slightest bit of tension will cause it to snap.

The Columbia University department of history was located in a building called Fayerweather Hall. It looked like a building transported from Victorian England, redbrick and laced with intricate scrollwork. It felt as out of place in Manhattan as I did several years ago.

We entered the building and the receptionist, a middleaged woman whose nameplate read Carolyn, directed us to William Hollinsworth’s office on the first floor. The door to William Hollinsworth’s office was wide open. I entered first, Jack following me.

Hollinsworth was about forty years old, with a severe crew cut and intense green eyes. His hair was specked with gray, and he wore a pair of square-rimmed reading glasses that sat on the tip of his nose. He wore a well-cut gray suit jacket that did little to hide the taut frame underneath.

I’d met many athletes, cops and military personnel over the years, and they fell into one of two categories.

Either they continued their fitness routines to a T after leaving their vocation, or let themselves go entirely. Bill

Hollinsworth clearly had not let his post-military career become a detriment to his fitness.

“Professor Hollinsworth?” I said.

He stood up, removed his glasses.

Hollinsworth was not a tall man, maybe five-ten or eleven, but he stood up straight as an arrow and held his shoulders back like he was expecting a salute.

“You must be Parker,” he said. Jack had followed behind me, and peeked his head out. “And Jack O’Donnell.”

“It’s a pleasure, sir.” Jack extended his hand. Hollinsworth took it, shook it, then motioned for us to sit down.

Jack took his seat, and I noticed him rubbing his hand and grimacing.

I closed the door to the professor’s office, took a seat as well, and glanced around the room.

The former Special Forces officer kept his office as clean and free from excess debris as he kept his body. The bookshelves were all neatly aligned, every paper neatly arranged. Even his in-and out-boxes, which were full, somehow managed to be perfect examples of immaculate care. There were no picture frames, no trinkets, no souvenirs, posters, awards or plaques. Nothing that led you to believe that William Hollinsworth had anything in his life but his work.

If the sign of a sick mind was a clean desk, then

William Hollinsworth was Hannibal Lecter.

The professor sat back down, folded his hands and crossed his legs.

“Mr. Parker. Mr. O’Donnell. What can I do for you, sirs?”

“Professor Hollinsworth,” I said.

“Bill,” he said with a smile. “I ask my students to call me Professor Hollinsworth, so unless you’ve just applied here to be an undergraduate I don’t expect the same formalities from you, Mr. Parker.”

“All right then, Bill, as we told your secretary, we’re here from the New York Gazette. ”

“Carolyn did mention that to me, yes. What can I do for you?”

“Twenty years ago, you were a member of a Special

Forces unit in Panama. Is that correct?”

Hollinsworth shifted in his chair. He clearly wasn’t expecting this line of questioning.

“That’s right,” he said. “I was there for a little over a year.”

“You were with Operational Detachment Bravo, along with ten other men and women. Correct?”

“That’s correct,” he said, a hint of agitation dipping into his voice. “Did you just come here to confirm things we both already know?”

“Sorry to waste your time,” I said, “but Mr. O’Don-276

Jason Pinter nell and I did some background research on you and your squad before we came here. But we both know that what you read in the newspapers and what you experience in actual life can differ greatly.”

“That’s true. Fair enough.”

“According to military records, you and three other members of your squad were attacked by members of

Manuel Noriega’s military deployment, the PDF, on

January sixth, nineteen-ninety. Is that right?”

Hollinsworth’s eyes narrowed. He was no longer shifting but staring straight at me. I couldn’t tell if he was angry that I was dredging up old memories, glad that his near-death experience was still a topic of discussion, or furious to the point where he might rip my head off with his bare hands.

“That’s right.”

“One man was killed that day. Chester Malloy.” Hollinsworth nodded slowly, as his eyes softened.

“Were you close with Major Malloy?” Jack said suddenly. I turned to face him, but he was looking at Hollinsworth.

“I was,” the man said. “Our whole unit, Bravo, we trained together, fought together. I would have died for any one of them. And I wish I had been able to. But…”

Then Hollinsworth trailed off.

“But what?” Jack said.

“I have no problem giving my life for my country, or for one of my countrymen. But that day, we shouldn’t have been in a position for anyone to lose their life.”

“Why not?” Jack said.

“We knew not to mess around with the PDF,” Hollinsworth said. “A few weeks earlier, Second Lieutenant

Robert Paz was coming out of a restaurant in Panama City. He came across a PDF squad. He was alone. Now, any smart man or woman would have had the common sense to know when the right time is to fight, and that was most certainly the wrong time. We never got an official number, but civilian reports said that Lieutenant Paz was outnumbered at least eight to one.”

“He decided to fight,” I said.

“Not fight,” Hollinsworth said. “See, Paz was a member of a special unit nicknamed the ‘Hard Chargers.’

Their job was to actively provoke the PDF, to incite them either to violence against American troops or Panamanian civilians.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked.

“Because until then, we had no reason to go after

Noriega. Nothing official, anyway. Lots of innuendo, and we knew for certain he was trafficking in enough drugs to fill the Grand Canyon fifty times over. But you can’t overthrow every dictator that’s dabbling in illegal goods.

If that was the case we’d be at war with half the known world. No, we needed something more tangible. Something we could sell to citizens back home.”

“That’s where Paz came in.”

Hollinsworth nodded slowly.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like that, though. Hard

Chargers were never supposed to travel alone. Paz just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they recognized him.”