Collateral

Chechnya.

May of 1990.

It was a gentle clicking sound interrupting hours of radio silence. Larry was waiting for it. He rested his face near the radio and made tick marks on a blank sheet of paper, adjusting the height and spacing to match the way the clicks sounded. I was responsible for marking the time, down to the millisecond, and the time since the last series of clicks. It was a tedious, thankless task, but I did it without complaint.

"Spies spend a lot of time listening. Most of my job is gathering intelligence and interpreting it. Untrained eyes could spend hours combing through useless information." Larry liked to teach, especially in the long hours between clicks. "Your boys are out there scanning those tapes and questioning hotel employees – that will get them nowhere."

"But we scanned the tapes."

"We scanned the tapes for one reason – to find out how many hostages were alive. But those tapes won't tell them who these guys are or where they went, and neither will the employees. Even if they knew, no one would talk. You saw what happened to the guy at the desk."

"But what are we doing? With the clicking?"

Larry smiled at that question. It was always hard to tell if he was being genuine or mocking me. "Glad you finally asked. You in the habit of doing meaningless tasks just because someone tells you to?"

"Is this meaningless?"

"No. But you should always know why you're doing something. And not just that. You should know more than anyone else, even your allies. It only takes one person to screw up a sensitive operation." Larry tapped the radio, which was deathly silent. "What do you think the clicking means?"

"It must be some form of communication."

"But who's talking?"

"The kidnappers?"

"Is that a question?"

"The kidnappers."

"Exactly. I tuned into a frequency used by local law enforcement, only there are no law enforcement using it. Why is that?"

"…I'm not sure."

"Crisis procedure. Police switch over to short-wave lines to keep their conversations from being overheard. You can bet your ass most Russian criminals know this, but it's pretty ballsy to use the standard frequency in the meantime. And what did we learn about our guys from that tape?"

"They're pretty ballsy."

Larry nodded. "You gotta think like a criminal, kid. Where's the last place the police would look for someone who just kidnapped an entire family?"

"Right under their noses."

"So where are we looking?"

"Right under their noses."

Larry looked over his paper, which was now covered in little marks varying in size and frequency. "I've dealt with guys like this before. We can only hope they want a big payout. If they just want to incite terror… well, it gets a lot stickier."

"Because they would kill the hostages?"

"Because the hostages would have been dead the moment they got into that van – and because they wouldn't stop with one family."

I went to his side of the desk, looking down on the sheet full of tallies and discerning nothing useful from them. "What are you writing?"

"See this little dial?" Larry pointed at a little device he had attached to the radio, which started ticking each time a click came through. "It attempts to measure the distance from a central location – in this case, this room – to the source of the signal. Every time they communicate, it dials up to about ten kilometers."

"But that means-"

"It means our friends are well within the city limits and not that far from the police station, which is ballsy. But we already established how bold they are. The real trick here is figuring out what the clicks mean and how we can use them to pinpoint a location."

I sat down, studying the lines and trying to figure out why he had chosen to make these patterns. Larry said nothing, offered no assistance, only watched.

And then it came to me.

"One of them is moving."

Larry smiled his first genuine smile of the day. "How did you deduce that?"

"You were relating the kilometer reading to the clicks. Each set starts with ten, but the responses – these are the responses, right? – were further away, and getting closer, sometime less than a kilometer from the station. And then they settle back at fifteen kilometers."

"So, what does that mean for us?"

"It means… one of them is keeping an eye on the police."

"And…?"

"And if they keep driving past the police station we can follow them."

Larry drew the paper toward him, sketching two circles. He made a bold dot and said, "If this is the station, and this circle represents a ten-kilometer area around the station – and this circle is fifteen, where the car keeps parking after it comes by-"

"We can follow them and use the distance of the first set of clicks to narrow down the area where they originated."

Larry drew another circle, which overlapped slightly with the first, and shaded in the overlapping area. "It's not perfect science, but once I get my hands on a map we can pick out the most likely stash houses. You can't hide people just anywhere – you need a basement, or a soundproof room, or enough space that no one would hear you."

"Should we tell Sadler about this?"

"No, no. We call in backup when we have a location. Right now, this is all pretty fragile. We can't have a team of soldiers following that car around and blowing the whole thing. We need it to keep doing what it's doing."

Larry had a way with words, a way that put a seed of doubt in my stomach. I could understand not talking to the police immediately, but keeping my superior out of it? Wasn't that a punishable offense? But when I thought of going against what Larry wanted, my head went right back to the video of the family being hauled from their hotel room. I remember Larry being there to save my life not once, but twice. I had a deep-rooted trust in him that I simply could not shake.

He put his hand on my shoulder, as if sensing my indecision, and gave it a gentle squeeze. "You gotta have faith in yourself, kid. You can't always go running to the big guns when something scares you. I know it seems like too much for two people to handle, but it doesn't take twenty people to accomplish great things."

Larry started strapping himself into his gear, which consisted of a mishmash of black, bulletproof pads and an odd selection of handguns. He seemed to favor them over rifles. I followed his lead, trying to take his words to heart, but feeling like I was betraying Sadler every second.

"You ready to put that training to good use?" Larry asked, leading me out of the station by the back door, and into the ratty brown car he had been assigned.

I nodded, not bothering to put a seatbelt on. Larry parked around the block from the station, among a few other cars in front of a hotel. He set the radio, with the device still attached, on the dashboard, and the waiting began.

"Where did you say you were from, kid?"

He was not big on asking personal questions. It caught me off guard. "Um, Miami."

"Big city. My old handler used to say that the best spies come from big cities. You learn to blend in, to stay out of trouble, to be anonymous."

"Handler?"

"Gives out assignments. General pain in the ass." Larry flashed a smile.

I knew he was saying I might be a good spy, and that every day he was trying to train me to be more like him, but the weight of it failed to settle.

When the clicking came, the conversation ended. We waited, breathless, watching ever car that passed down our street. Larry seemed disheartened when the clicking stopped and no viable target had been identified, but one last car came – a blue Sudan – and he sat straight up.

"That one."

He drove normally, only pulling out when there were three cars between us and the Sudan. It took a straight route through the business side of town, away from the resorts and things, and turned right onto a quiet back road, turning again to park near an empty lot. Larry did not follow. He drove past, and parked in the road, obscured by a delivery truck.

"Now we wait for the all-clear…"

It came at once, a gentle clicking, and the device on the radio buzzed at four kilometers. Larry pulled out a map, measured, and drew a ten-kilometer circle around the police station, and then, around their location, a four-kilometer circle. One area, less than a block, was covered in the overlap. I smiled, fascinated, again dazzled by his genius.

"And that, kid, is how it's done."

"That's amazing."

"Don't count your chickens yet." Larry tapped the map. "We still have to decide where these guys might be hiding out."

"There are only three buildings there. We could search them all."

"We could start with the wrong one, and tip them off."

I was silenced by his tone, a bite full of venom.

"Don't stop thinking now, kid. We have three residential lots, across the street from a church and a graveyard. I doubt they would be stupid enough to hide in a church – as whacko religious as this area is – so we have three possibilities. What do you think?"

I studied the map, an aerial shot of the city, and saw three fuzzy rectangles. "I… can't tell."

"Right. So, we have another stop to make."

"We need the building plans."

"Good. Where might we go to get those?"

"City hall?"

"City planning. Separate building. You see them a lot in resort cities. I'll call up the station and get directions. You get behind the wheel."

"Why do I have to drive?"

"Do you speak Russian?"

He had been teaching me, but I could barely hold a conversation with the hundred or so words I knew. I said nothing, only switched seats with him and headed away from where the car we had followed was parked. Larry spoke rapidly on the phone and kept pointing out ways for me to turn until we came back to the business part of town. It was a wide road, dotted with little shops, much nicer than some of the drab neighborhoods we had ridden past.

"You'll learn something, traveling around," Larry said once his call ended. We were just pulling into a parking lot. "Resorts make money for resort owners while the nearby communities deflate, and the local resources are drained."

He was right. Even the buildings around the planning office looked like slums.

Larry went in alone and came out with new knowledge. He was not allowed to borrow the plans, but he could look at them. He picked out the house on the right side, with one story and a basement, and a minimal backyard surrounded by a large fence.

"One thing kidnappers really like is privacy. High fences, minimal windows, nice big basement, and most of all, rundown neighborhoods – look the other way type places."

We hit the road. Larry called for backup. It was all happening so fast.

"What if-?"

"Kid, what did I say about faith? I know what I'm doing."

"But-"

"Do you want to complete this mission, or not? I can drop you off here if you're not man enough to see it through."

I did my best to quell my misgivings.

"You've handled hostage situations before, right?"

"A few."

"But your buddy Sadler was there to hold your hand. I'm not holding your hand. You're gonna go in there, and you're gonna put that training to use. You're gonna get that family to safety."

"I am. I will."

"That's the spirit."

Larry parked down the street. It was almost sundown. He wasted no time, only looking at the house for a minute or two before deciding his deductions were correct, and this was where the family would be held. We exited the car silently, letting the doors stay open, and crept through the backyard of another, nearby house.

Before we were too close, Larry whispered, "You do what you have to do. I believe in you, kid."

And that was it.

We hit the fence, scaled it, and dropped into the backyard. There was a dead dog lying by the back fence and the sliding glass door had blood on it. Inside, I could already see two bodies – not the family that was kidnapped, but perhaps the family that lived here. Larry saw them too, and his nostrils flared. He had a handgun out. He motioned for me to draw a weapon.

It was dark inside, save the glow of a television. Two people sat on the couch with the unmistakable heads of two rifles peeking over the cushions beside them, and no one was looking toward the back door.

I got my hands on the sliding door and tested it. Unlocked. I slid it open so slowly that it took a full minute to make a big enough gap to get through. Soundless, I slipped inside. Larry was right behind me. He approached the living room, where the oblivious sentries were, and I went straight for the basement door. There was a new hinge, recently added, with a padlock on it.

Larry turned toward me, and I pointed out the lock. He nodded, motioning toward the sentries, and then thrusting his hand toward the hall where the bedrooms were. He wanted me to clear the house.

It would be impossible to stay undetected for much longer. Larry was almost to the couch, moving silently, in a half-crouch, like a hunting cat, and my path to the hallway would inevitably cross one of the sentries' peripheral visions.

We were in a powder keg, about to explode.

Larry moved like a master. He drew a knife, grasped the first sentry around the jaw, and slit his throat from ear-to-ear. It made a sick sound and brought a quick end. He was on the next one before the first one was dead, trying the same tactic. He met resistance. I saw him struggling as I ducked into the hallway.

The first two bedrooms were empty, save the bodies of some children that must have been killed as they slept. My heart hammered. The master bedroom was at the end of the hall. There was thumping from the living room, a few grunts, the clatter of metal on wood.

I prepared to kick the final door open, because the element of surprise was long gone, but something felt off. I heard a creak, a clatter, a breath.

I flattened myself to the wall just as a spray of gunfire came from the master bedroom. It shredded the door. Splinters filled the air. I staggered into the first room, the room of a little girl who lay in a permanent slumber and waited in the doorway. Bullets pierced the bedroom walls, but not the frame. I was protected by thicker wood. It seemed like several minutes I stood there, trying to decide how to escape as wave after wave of gunfire kept me pinned to the spot.

And then the shots stopped all at once.

I waited, breathless, until I heard his panicked voice.

"Michael? Michael!"

I stepped out, trembling, as the dust cleared.

Larry was covered in blood. His black vest glistened with it. He holstered his gun and stepped through the remains of the master bedroom door. "Come on out, kid. We're clear." Larry put an arm around my shoulders, guiding me back into the living room, where the dead sentries were still bleeding.

"You did good, kid. You're okay. Just breathe."

It was hard to breathe when every muscle in my body was tensed up, but Larry squeezing my shoulders made it a lot easier. That innate trust kicked in and I took a few ragged breaths.

"There you go. Easy now."

It all happened so fast, it almost seemed like a dream.

The front door burst open. Larry yanked out his gun and fired. A fully uniformed officer slumped to the ground and the carpet became saturated with his blood.

"Shit." Larry went toward the body, pressing his fingers to his throat, checking for a pulse. He looked sadly up at me and locked his jaw. "This was an accident."

I nodded numbly. My eyes got stuck on the shiny gold badge. "Y-Y-Yeah."

Larry went to the couch, wiping his gun on his bloody shirt and pressing it into the hand of the nearest dead sentry. He placed it in his lap when the floppy dead fingers refused to hold onto it.

"Go get the hostages." Larry brushed his hands off on his shirt, but only smeared the blood on his hands further. He locked them over his head, staring at the police officer he had killed. "Go get the hostages and bring them up here. Go now!"

I jumped, as his voice had suddenly boomed in the quiet house. It took a moment to pry my eyes from the dead officer – an innocent, an accident – and go back into the kitchen.

My hands were numb. It took a while to get the crowbar into the lock, and then my strength seemed to fail as I tried to pry it open. I was shaking badly. It felt like I had never really seen death before – not so up close and personal, at least. Men had died in front of me, good and kind and innocent men, but there was a brutality to the way that Larry killed. It was completely alien. I could not stop picturing their throats, opened up, their insides like raw meat, their blood coating his hands, his face, his chest. I kept seeing the surprised face of the officer – the young man with the shiny gold badge – as a bullet tore through the vital organs in his chest. I kept hearing the sound of him hitting the ground, the way that Larry cursed, the immediate guilt on his face.

But I worked through it.

You gotta have faith in yourself, kid. You can't always go running to the big guns when something scares you. I know it seems like too much for two people to handle, but it doesn't take twenty people to accomplish great things.

I armed myself with a handgun and a flashlight and descended the stairs. It smelled rank, like human feces and old blood. I found the light and turned it on.

And there was the Fobbs family, huddled in a corner, their arms all bound restrictively behind their backs and their legs in chains. Raymond was the most injured, with a big, swollen black bruise covering half of his face, and his wife seemed unconscious. She was breathing long, shallow breaths, and wearing different clothes than what I had seen in the video. Evan, the seven-year-old, was propped up against his father, his little knees worn to the bone by his bindings, and his little brother was trying to cry through his gag, but only hyperventilating.

Everyone was alive. It stopped my trembling, to see them all like that.

"Everything is going to be okay," I said, approaching, keeping my voice as gentle as I could manage. "I came here to help you. I'm gonna get you out of those chains, okay?"

Raymond had tears in his eyes. He nodded and tried to speak through his gag.

Shots went off upstairs.

Just like that, the peace ended, and I was rushing back up, missing a step in my haste.

Larry was standing in the living room, his gun drawn, facing the front door. Where there had been just the body of the young officer – an innocent, an accident – now there were two. His uniform was more worn, his face older, his gun drawn, but obviously unfired.

"What happened?" I demanded.

Larry still had his gun out, still pointed at the corpse, this empty look on his face. "It was his partner… he saw… I had to…"

I hit my knees beside the older officer, hoping he was still alive, but Larry had deadly aim. "You… you killed him!"

"I had to!" Larry declared again, his tone cold.

I looked back at the officers, two gold stars lying dead together, and realized I was wrong to let Larry talk me out here. We should have called for backup to infiltrate the house. Sadler and the team could have prevented this. We could have taken the hostages to safety, detained or put an end to the kidnappers, and avoided these victims in the process.

And I looked at Larry, and that strange, innate trust I had in him was shattered. I saw him for the first time – really saw him – and found a monster looking back at me.

"You'll tell them they got caught in the crossfire, plain and simple. You got that, kid?"

I nodded and felt a gnawing hole open up inside.

"Go handle the hostages."

It took less than ten minutes for the entire police station – and my team – to arrive at the house. We had to carry each family member upstairs, because their captivity had left them weak, and I stood in the street to watch the ambulances drive off. Sadler questioned me, and I told him the truth – for the most part. When he asked about the officers, I gave him the lie with a straight face, and I was hurt to see how much he trusted me.

I knew I could be a monster, too. I could lie, and I could kill, and I could dance along the line of right and wrong like Larry did. It would be so easy to be like him.

It would be so easy.

XxX

When the dust cleared, we were all put on a plane back to the States to be debriefed. It was not your typical black flight, but a passenger plane, where we were given first class status. I sat with my team, brooding, burning, until I was possessed with curiosity.

Larry sat alone near the front of the plane, writing silently in a notepad.

"Why were they there?" I asked, taking the seat beside him.

Larry shrugged. "Heard gunshots, decided to be heroes."

I could not read his writing. It was in Russian. I focused on the window instead, watching the clouds and trying to forget what I had seen today.

"Listen, kid," Larry said, after a long silence. "Sometimes you get collateral damage. You have to be able to move past it. It's all part of the price of freedom."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I get sent to do a job. People die sometimes. But the job gets done and we get one more day without a war, without an international incident, without skyrocketing oil prices."

"So, you think it was worth it, in the end?"

"I think the mission was a success, and that's all that matters, kid."

Larry had opened my eyes in the worst possible way. Parts of me agreed with him, that saving the family was more important than who got killed in the process – but where was the line? How many lives could they take and still justify saving those people? Was it a life for a life? Would four be too much? I was so conflicted inside, so confused. Right and wrong were cloudy.

But even through that haze, I knew I was a better man than Larry. I could not look coldly at those people, collateral damage or not. I could not live with being the reason they died. It was that little difference that comforted me, that let me sleep at night.