for the Agency.”
Mick’s hand fisted, ached to slam against the floor. He resisted. The gesture was ineffectual. Unvented rage was not.
“I erased your identity,” Arthur continued.
“If the Agency is trying to get me killed, they won’t be too happy about that.”
“It’s to protect the Agency as much as you. When the feds or the locals look, they’ll find nothing, a man who never existed. Still they’ll have your name. Others will know it. Grainy photos, a crude sketch or two will follow. It’s out of my control now, Michael.”
Mick waited for Arthur to tell him more, to give him a rationale. The darkness and the silence became too much, so finally he asked, “Why?”
The other man’s eyes looked into the night. “There’s not always an explanation, Michael. Life is random. Hit or miss. You stepped into its path.”
“What about the raid on the arms smugglers last night?”
“They got seven arrests, little fish, some AK-47s.” Arthur’s voice was flat. “The operation was compromised. There was a leak. The key figures had got out of the U.S. and escaped back to the Far East by last night.”
Mick’s fingers remained furled into a tight ball. Since the first death, he’d held fast to his rage. “The operation was deliberately sabotaged.” His voice was as level as his mentor’s.
“An investigation on the incident will be conducted through the traditional channels,” Arthur said.
“It should’ve gone down as planned.”
“Life,” Arthur said. “Hit or miss.” He touched his temple.
Mick knew he wouldn’t get much more information. The Agency’s M.O. was maximum secrecy equated maximum security and efficiency. Agents reported to an assigned contact. They were given only the necessary information to carry out their assignments. Each agent knew if their cover was blown, they’d be abandoned. It was the sacrifice of one for the survival of many. If nothing went wrong, the system worked.
Something had gone wrong.
Mick looked at the man driving, the man who’d engineered his first death, and in doing so, had saved his life. Since that time, he’d died a hundred deaths, a hundred different ways, none of them real, all of them resulting in greater good…until now.
Mick looked at the man he loved. “Who ordered my setup?”
Quiet was the only answer. Mick’s words hovered in the silence.
“Kittredge, our own agents, an international arms ring… It’s someone big, isn’t it?” Mick said.
Arthur’s gaze stayed on the road. “Rot starts at the top.”
“Corbain.” Mick muttered the name of the outsider put in charge of the Agency after last year’s presidential election.
Arthur steered the van into the parking lot of a convenience store. The lot was empty except for a car parked to the far side and a pickup truck near the entrance. He pulled up to the pumps and turned off the engine.
“I’ve brought you as far as I can. I’ll fill the tank. There’s a change of clothes in the bag back there. Money, identification, a name and number on a card in the glove compartment. Friends of mine. They own a twenty-two-foot whaler that can get you across the Gulf.”
Mick looked at his oldest friend. “You didn’t have to do this. If they find out…”
Arthur looked at him for a moment, then said the words he’d said to Mick twelve years ago. “Everybody deserves a chance.” He opened the door.
“Arthur?” Mick placed his hand on the other man’s forearm. “Thank you.”
When the older man’s gaze met his own, Mick could almost read his thoughts. Arthur had had to make a choice once before. He feared he had chosen wrong.
“You’ll be on your own now,” Arthur said. “Stay alive.”
The driver’s door closed. Mick waited but didn’t hear the gas cap being unscrewed or the gurgle of gas into the tank. Rising to his knees behind the front seat, he saw large signs on the pumps instructing customers to pay inside before pumping. Arthur was walking toward the store. Only the streaks of gray at either temple revealed the years that had passed since he’d recruited Mick. Even then, the poreless skin had been fine-lined, the slants deep from nose to mouth.
Mick reached into the bag of clothes when he felt an unwelcome pressure against his bladder. He looked around the lot. There was a bathroom at the end of the building.
Mick scanned the lot once more. Inside the store, he could see Arthur standing before one of the candy bar displays. A man, mid-twenties, came out of the store, got in the pickup and drove off. Mick grabbed a pair of sweatpants, slipped on the running shoes, slid open the van door and, gathering the sheet tighter, stepped out.
The bathroom door was locked.
Behind the store, darkness almost hid a stand of trees. He headed toward them.
He moved behind a thick trunk, back far enough so he could see the lot, but no one could see him. A dark Chevy turned into the lot. It pulled up to the pumps, opposite the van, and parked.
Arthur had come out of the store and was walking toward the vehicle, a chocolate bar in his hand. He unwrapped the candy, broke off a square, put it into his mouth.
Mick finished and was pulling up the too-short sweatpants that ended several inches above his ankles. He scanned the lot. It was quiet. No one had gotten out of the dark sedan. Mick’s instinct of twelve years undercover awoke. His mouth was forming the word No as the sedan’s window lowered and a fat steel cylinder appeared. A muted pop-pop-pop… Arthur dropping. Several more pops and the sedan sped away, gone as if it’d never been.
Mick was running now. He reached Arthur and dragged his body away from the pumps. The clerk looked out the wide front windows.
“Call an ambulance,” Mick yelled. He looked down at the man in his arms. He’d been hit once in the heart, twice in the forehead. Execution-style.
Mick looked to the pumps, the van, saw the dark stream where shots had punctured the side of the vehicle, the half-empty gas tank with its lethal fumes. He felt the intuitive quiver, the anticipation of disaster, his muscles tightening. “Get out,” he yelled to the clerk coming out the door. “Get out of here!”
He covered Arthur’s body with his own. At first, the explosion was contained, almost anticlimactic. Then, the fuel tank ignited. Light flashed and noon changed places with the night. Mick felt the wave of heat roll over his body. He looked up. The clerk was running to his car parked at the far end of the lot. Mick rolled off Arthur and dragged him toward the woods.
Beneath the long shadows of the trees, Mick placed his mouth on Arthur’s and he breathed into the man, even knowing it was as useless as a fist slamming against metal. The sweet smell of chocolate met him. He checked Arthur’s neck, then the wrist above the hand that still clutched the half-wrapped Cadbury bar.
Mick looked back toward
