Max Collins: Fate of the Union

Chris Bryson knew he was in over his head.

And not just out of his depth — more like going down for the third time, still conscious but holding his breath, waiting for the darkness to come.

Of course he was not in the water at all, and in fact he was already sitting in the near dark — a former Secret Service agent and Congressional Medal of Honor winner holed up like a bank robber in a seedy two-story motel/hotel in Chantilly, Virginia, where he could hear the overhead rumble and whine of the metal beasts of Washington Dulles International Airport. On the one hand, they promised escape, on the other threatened to consume him.

He grunted a laugh through the slit in his face that wasn’t quite a smile. Such melodramatic thoughts were part and parcel, he supposed, of hiding out in a place called the Skyway Farer. Not that he couldn’t take care of himself, normally. But sometimes even the strongest, most confident man could use a little goddamn help.

And right now the only person he could think of, who might be up to helping him out of this deep a hole, was Joe Reeder. He only hoped, with everything that had happened to Joe in the last year or so, that help from him wasn’t out of the question.

Five feet nine and in damn good shape for his midfifties, Bryson kept his sandy-colored hair military short, the gray barely showing, all of which conspired with his boyish features to make him look forty-something. At work he wore contacts, glasses at home.

Now, though, in this low-rent motel room, in the dim light of a bedside lamp, his eyes burned from too many contact-lens hours, and he’d left his glasses on his desk at his office. He wished he could take the damned things out, but that just wasn’t going to happen — he had to stay alert and — small detail — he had to be able to see.

There was something else he wished he didn’t have to wear. Even as he sat on the bed, legs stretched out, a pillow propped against the wobbly headboard, he was ever aware of the shoulder rig with loaded Glock, a round in the chamber. His suit pants were getting wrinkled, the fabric as loose as a used parachute, but looking sharp was not exactly a priority. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up, his tie loose as a noose before the executioner snugged it.

The room was decorated in Early Twenty-First Century Urban Blight with its Wi-Fi hook-up, small flat-screen TV, and high curved shower rod so that fat-ass businessmen could fit inside. His suit coat hung on the back of the office-type chair at a meager table of a workstation where his laptop sat, open, screen saver on. Random light trails blundered to the edges of the screen, then bounced and dissipated, a sad reminder of what might become of him if Reeder couldn’t help. Right now he would kill for a drink, but the only cocktail available was the mingled odor of sweat and fear.

In a room silent but for the muffled drone of televisions in the rooms on either side of him, Bryson pricked his ears, searching for the slightest sound from the hallway. Fear was nothing new to him. Sometimes it was like a friend whose advice was irritating but worth listening to. This nagging friend had aided him in combat, and when he stood post on the presidential detail.

But this time — was it his age? — the fear was not a friend, but some out of control stranger blurting false alarms.

Only not quite a stranger.

He’d met this kind of fear before. Like the day his fellow agent Reeder had taken a bullet for President Gregory Bennett. Yet never before this bad — he hadn’t been this fucking scared when he and a gaggle of other agents had jumped on that would-be presidential assassin and disarmed him.

No, this was different.

This was fear bordering on panic, and not just for himself — he could handle that, and maybe that was why this felt so different. This time the stranger had come to shout warnings about Beth.

His wife, Beth, who he hadn’t even dared call yet. Who he knew might come under that terrible designation of collateral damage, generating in him a fear for her safety that dwarfed anything he might feel for himself.

And what of his son, Christopher? A man by the calendar, but still just a boy compared to his father’s years. That this might touch his son was so terrible a thought, it refused to fully form.

That’s why he needed Reeder.

Working as a one-man security operation, Bryson didn’t have anyone in his current life who could handle this level of shitstorm. And he was so far out of the national security loop, he didn’t know who to call that could be trusted.

Except Joe Reeder.

If it came to a shoot-out, Reeder would be on top of it, and the man had the kind of unique standing that meant Bryson could come in from the cold. With Reeder at his side, anyway.

In the motel room’s near darkness, Bryson shook his head. How the hell had he gotten himself into so much trouble so fast?

It had begun as just another routine gig, just some normal digging — a simple background check for Christ’s sake! And now, somehow, he was running for his life — if holing up in a sleazy shithole, with his loaded gun on and his burning contacts in, qualified as “running.”

More like running in place. Waiting for help that might not come, help he hadn’t been able to even ask for yet. Of course, if he didn’t get hold of Reeder soon, his fears, his worries, would soon be over...

Last night, as part of his security work, Bryson had committed the first real crime of his career — not the middling corner-cutting anybody in his line might pull, no. But outright breaking and entering — into somewhere he should not have been, where he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to see.

He’d known the instant he found the thing that it was bigger than he could handle himself. He hadn’t even expected to find it, had been hoping this was just a wild goose chase, a wild hair up his ass. It was neither. Although he had barely touched the damn thing, taking just one photo with his digital camera, he knew instantly he was looking at major-league trouble.

And ran.

Even though his discovery had been an almost random action, he was aware that they were onto him, that his knowledge of what they’d figuratively buried could literally bury him.

He pulled out the burner phone he’d bought from Reeder’s guy, DeMarcus. No way to trace it, no way for his pursuers to know he would go to Reeder. And no sign of them, either, now that he’d gone to ground.

Should be safe to make the call. Right? Right? Still, he went through every possibility again before telling himself, No, it’s fine, the call will be safe . He punched in Reeder’s number and waited while it rang. And rang.

And rang.

Where the hell was he?

It wasn’t like Joe Reeder had a social life. Why wasn’t he answering? Bryson’s blood pressure rose in tandem with his growing panic.

Did he dare leave a voice mail?

Fuck it, too much at stake not to. When the beep came, he said in a rush, “Joe, Chris Bryson. Call this number when you get this. Life and death, brother — don’t let me down.”

He hit END CALL and stared at the phone in his palm as if Reeder might immediately ring back. When that didn’t happen, he kept staring, willing the thing to ring. When it refused to, he slipped it into his pants pocket. Watched pot never boils, watched cell never rings.