2
"When the Spanish colonized the Philippines in the early 16th century, they brought their quintessentially European method of war-making here and their disregard for due process and law. The problem that the Spanish empire had was that despite the fact that they were militarily powerful was that they lacked the legal institutions of France and Britain and so to maintain order they often resorted to intimidation and thuggery. That in combination with their chronic mismanagement of their silver assets left this and the most of their colonies in dire economic trouble. As a result, the Philippines, Mexico, and Cuba, and many others lacked the institutional infrastructure to take advantage of the post-war boom years. It's why the Manila is so much poorer than Hong Kong." Aaron explained as they hiked up the street.
Marta looked back and was surprised by how far up they had climbed. She could see the docks receding into the distance as they made their way deeper into the small island town.
"Didn't realize you were such a historian," Marta replied, enjoying his explanation and his enthusiasm.
"I read a lot," Aaron explained.
"You are full of surprises," Marta said.
"That's what you find surprising?" Aaron asked as turned his head back with an expression of convincing suspicion.
"The guns, the running and jumping, and the karate, I get. I mean, I was in the lab, day in and day out, I didn't do the statistical analysis, but I could infer…" Marta explained.
"And what did you infer about the blue chems?" Aaron asked.
"We just thought that enhanced your reaction time, focus, non-linear problem solving… never really considered curiosity as one of the side effects." Marta explained.
Aaron dropped his head slightly and smiled to himself. He stopped and pulled out the map of the island that the fisherman had given to him. For a moment he surveyed the intersection. Marta quickly caught up with him and tried to look at what he was looking at, although she had no idea what it was. The streets were dusty as the result of a few mopeds that drove by and displaced the loose elements of the road. Marta immediately covered her mouth with her hand. Aaron seemed unfazed. Around them were a row of shacks and old colonial stylebuildings, worn down and unpainted, no doubt financed by the Spanish during their time, Marta deduced.
Aaron folded up the map and tucked it into his back pocket. His eyes squinted slightly as the sun rose above the mountains and momentarily blinded him. He dropped his backpack to the ground and opened it. He removed from it a stack of bills still wrapped in plastic, a switchblade, and an old cellphone. He tore open the plastic wrapping of the bills and divided up the cash into small portions and handed one of them to Marta, along with the switchblade and the cellphone.
"Don't panic, the knife is just for emergencies. You press this button and the blade will come out." Aaron said as he demonstrated. "Make sure your hand stays clear of this opening. There's a pre-programmed number in the phone if you need me."
"And here," he continued as he handed her a small stack of fresh American bills, "you can buy a change of clothes, don't' flash that around, pull out single bills."
"Wait, where are you going?" Marta asked in a genuinely alarmed but subdued voice.
"I need to take care of a few things. You see that bar over there?" Aaron pointed down the road at the building with a beer mug painted on the sign above the entrance.
"Yeah," Marta answered.
"Let's meet there in say… three hours?" Aaron said as he looked at his watch.
"Okay," Marta answered tentatively.
"You sound nervous." Aaron commented.
"Well the last time I left you were we ambushed by the police…" Marta said with a slight hint of embarrassment.
"You have my number." Aaron said as he reached out and held her hand. "You can always call me."
"Okay." Marta answered again, this time with a little more confidence in her tone.
Marta didn't want to move as she watched Aaron leave. He had this way of getting about when he wasn't dragging her along. His speed increased dramatically with each stride until he reached his comfortable pace. He seemed to always be late for something, even when he wasn't. Of course, she had known all of this from her lab reports but she had never seen any of the Outcome subjects in action.
She played with the stack of cash in her hand, half-wondering if this was his way of saying something he hadn't been able to put into words yet, half-wondering where he got the money from. Still, with a quick survey of her surroundings and with no cops or black helicopters she tried to put her mind at ease and do a little shopping.
His hands trembled a little as he dropped the packet of cream into his coffee. He quickly picked the container out of his coffee and dropped it into the waste bin. Byer had not known sleep in nearly 36 hours. He downed the drink as if it were an energy shot and crushed the paper cup in his hand before tossing it against the wall.
"Who the fuck are these guys?" Kramer asked Byer, as he sat on the couch place against the back wall of the room.
"The best of the best… apparently," Byer said taking a napkin and wiping down his hands.
"Hehehehe, straight from the academy now eh?" Kramer gave a hearty chuckle.
"Apparently, anyone can be an analyst these days. Love Google," Byer said.
The TV hummed in the background with the sound on mute. He watched it at the corner of his eye as the rest of his team filtered through pages upon pages of intelligence reports as junior agents occasionally stop by the briefing room with yet more. The clicking of laptop keys, which at one point had given him the illusion of work, was now getting on his nerves, as frayed as they had been already. The dank fluorescent light that seemed to flicker imperceptibly picked away at his last threads of sanity as failure upon failure mounted upon itself like an avalanche of incompetence.
"Well that's it, LARX is done." He said as he sat himself down in his swivel chair, leaning back on the rest and turning off the TV.
"Damage control teams are on their way, our Manilan contacts are on the ground working with officials and police now," one of his aids reported, trying to maintain an air of professionalism.
"Yeah because those guys are so competent, couldn't even catch the retard and a doctor!" Byer let slip one of his deadly sarcastic attacks. "I can guarantee that the BBC and Al-Jazeera will have this whole thing tied up in a neat little bow in the next few hours."
There was a silence in the room, as expected.
"Can we at least get his body back?" He asked.
"CIA says they are sending an agent to claim him right now." Another one of his aids reported.
Byer sat reclined in his chair, his eyes hidden underneath the shadow of his brow as his head leaned forward watching his thumbs twirl around themselves.
"How many photos?" He asked quietly.
"Of LARX-03?" One of his aids asked.
"Yes… of LARX-03…" Byer replied with seething menace.
"BBC has one, a number of local reporters, a bunch over Twitter from locals—" The aid continued before he was abruptly stopped.
"Fuck!" Byer screamed as he slammed his palms against the table.
"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck, and fuck you!" He continued as he pointed at each of the aids at the meeting. "Well isn't this just great, a twenty car pile-up, a dozen local police injured or dead, a gun fight out in the middle of the streets with well over a hundred witnesses… and the timing couldn't be better. Might as well just throw us in there with Treadstone and Blackbriar."
His breath returned to him, although his fury could still be seen and heard from his nostrils.
"What about the other two?" he asked lowering his voice again.
There was a moment's pause, but his team knew better than to not answer him. "We lost track of them after LARX-03 went down."
Byer closed his eyes and nodded in prescient disappointment, as if he knew if there was a worst of all possible situations; this was it.
"Okay, here's what you do. First, I want that body back and I want to know exactly what happened! Second, this does not get out, you bring me a cover story, a credible one! That we can feed to the public so you, all of you, and I, don't end up in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee with Landy, and Vosen. And remember, they like the CIA a lot better than they like us." Byer said with complete authority, trying to formulate a damage control plan for what very well may be an unsalvageable situation.
Kramer smiled to himself.
"Uhh, sir?" One of his aids began.
"What?" Byer's impatience returned.
"What about Aaron Cross and Doctor Shearing?" His aid asked.
"Who gives a shit? They just escaped with their lives, if the know what's good for them, they'll stay away." Byer said dismissively.
"Shouldn't we at least put a taskforce on them?" His aid insisted politely.
"Alright…" Byer said in an unexpectedly calm tone. "You want this? You got it, put together your team. Whatever you can scrape together with your clearance, but if you fail, I can guarantee that it won't be me in federal prison. Understand?" Byer made his case to the overly-enthusiastic aid.
The young analyst said nothing.
"Good," Byer said as his mercurial rage subsided once again.
A few moments of silence passed as the petrified junior staff as well as Director Kramer watched Byer packed up his papers, stuffed them into his briefcase and left the room, but not before emphatically slamming the door behind him.
His fingers gently grazed the edge of the glass catching the condensation on its way down. Occasionally he would glance up at the television, watching the news from Manila, but never for too long. He knew there was a possibility that his face would appear on the screen but really he was watching for Marta's sake. He had his identities lined up, at least for the next three airports but he didn't have any more documentation for her. He sat at the rendezvous bar sipping on a glass of cold water.
The bartender came over and switched the channel to a sports channel.
"Sorry, were you watching that?" He asked in his thickly accented but perfectly comprehensible English.
"No, it's fine." Aaron said with a cordial smile.
"Your guy just arrived." The bartender said as his nudged his head towards the doorway.
Aaron slowly turned from his stool to see the lanky figure dressed in fatigues carrying a briefcase along with two other men, probably bodyguards. He made eye contact with Aaron but did not say anything. He sat at a table near the window looking out onto the street, evidently checking if he had been tailed. When he was satisfied with inspection, he gestured at Aaron to join him at the table.
Aaron walked over and sat himself down on the chair opposite. The larger of his bodyguards came and reached out to pat him down. Aaron quickly grabbed the arm and without so much as leaving his seat hammerlocked him and pinned him to the table.
"I'm telling you right now, I'm armed and I'm not giving it up. But if it is all the same to you, I'd like to get this done without shooting anyone," Aaron said calmly.
The man sitting across from him smiled.
"That's good," he replied amusingly in the native accent. "I would like that too. But would you please release my man?"
Aaron released his hold on the man's wrist. He recoiled his arm back into its proper position and gave Aaron a menacing but ultimately harmless stare.
"So, do you have my money?" The man asked ignoring his bodyguard.
"It's not yours yet. And I would like to know see what I'm paying for," Aaron replied.
"Very well," the man said with a smile. He unlocked his briefcase and took out a dozen passports.
Aaron took them and flipped through them inspecting their legitimacy.
"I was expecting a bit more… variety," Aaron commented.
"Look around," the man replied. "Not many tourists here, we get what we can."
Aaron parsed through them a picked out five.
"I'll take the British, Australian, and three American passports." Aaron said handing the rest of the stack back.
"Why do you need so many passports?" the man inquired.
"Thought you were smarter than that," Aaron replied cryptically.
"I thought you Americans like to talk," the man leaned back on his chair trying to lighten the apparent mood.
"Who says I'm American?" Aaron rhetorically asked.
The man smiled again, pinching back his lips as if holding his tongue. His fingers danced at the edge of the table, rhythmically betraying, although wholly unnoticed by himself, his patience and nerves. From the suitcase he pulled out three boxes of ammunition and slid it over the Aaron. He opened the box and out slid 20 bronze coloured 9-mm rounds. Aaron pulled out his gun slowly to show the men across from him that he meant no harm. He ejected the half-magazine onto the table and then proceeded to weigh each bullet in his hand before popping it into the magazine.
"Satisfied?" The man asked.
"Where's the PSG-1?" Aaron asked.
"Where do you think I'm going to get a police grade sniper rifle? You know how I know you're an American?" The man said as his accent grew thicker along with his contempt. "It is because you're spoiled. You don't care where it comes from, you just want it. You think you can buy everything…"
There was a long pause.
"So you didn't bring it," Aaron said.
After another brief stare down, the man waved to his other bodyguard. The man standing behind him walked over to the table and placed down an old but well-kept Soviet era rifle on the table.
"SVD," Aaron commented.
"Russian weapons are easier to find," he explained.
Aaron removed the magazine from the rifle and inspected along with the rest of it, piece by piece. He looked through the scope and aimed it outside to check the focus and the distance. He was familiar with the SVD Dragonov, but he hadn't worked with one in years. It was big, it was cumbersome, and it didn't collapse into concealable parts. Slowly it dawned on him that without the American government supporting him, that cheap, outdated, Soviet made equipment was going to become the norm.
"Are you satisfied?" The man asked with increasing impatience.
Aaron placed his backpack on the table and took out a few stacks of cash and laid it out for the man in fatigues to inspect.
"Fifteen thousand," Aaron said.
"You said twenty…" The man reminded Aaron of their agreement.
"You said, you could get me a real sniper rifle," Aaron retorted.
The man leaned over on the table, inaudibly muttering to himself in Tagalog, as he counted the cash little by little. Aaron noticed the unease of the bartender watching in dismay as a gun deal was happening in his bar, probably fearing the worst. Aaron give him a reassuring look as if to say don't worry, I got this. Aaron packed up the bullets and the passports and dropped them into his backpack. He then took the big cumbersome rifle looked at it as it were just a nuisance, stood up, and slung it over his shoulder.
"At least it has a strap," Aaron sighed.
A moment later, as the man finished counting the cash and gave Aaron a nod of approval, the sound of footsteps alerted everyone. His bodyguards immediately went for their guns. Aaron turned around to find Marta with a frightened look on her face. But it soon melted away when she caught a glimpse of Aaron.
"Calm down guys, she's with me." Aaron said with a stern authoritarian tone.
The man in fatigues watched her with a peculiar stare as Aaron approached her. He loaded the cash into in his briefcase and evidently trying to recall something important.
"Do I know you?" The man asked Marta.
A thousand and one thoughts raced through Aaron's mind, he had been watching the news today.
"No," Aaron answered simply.
Aaron quickly grabbed Marta by the arm and led her out of the bar.
"What just happened?" Marta asked Aaron, in equal parts terror, confusion, and curiosity.
"I did some shopping too," Aaron replied simply.