Without Sanction

One

Austin, Texas



3 months later



The toddler smiled at me from over her mother's shoulder, her eyes sparkling. A pudgy hand snuck past the tumbling curls that framed her face, and her tiny fingers waved.



I didn't wave back.



Not because I didn't know the little girl. I knew her quite well. Her name was Abir, Arabic for beautiful, and the raven-haired cutie more than lived up to her name. No, I was ignoring her for a different reason altogether. Like her mother and father, Abir had been dead for almost three months.



But that didn't stop me from seeing her.



I closed my eyes, fighting the urge to return her wave as I had so many times before in the front room of her family's tiny Syrian apartment. Abir's laugh had been almost as intoxicating as her grin. Even now, it took everything within me not to smile on the off chance that the dead toddler, visible only to me, might break her silence and gift me with a giggle in return.



But I didn't smile and I didn't wave, because men who interacted with imaginary children attracted attention. Austin, Texas, might be the self-professed home of the weird, but I had no desire to make the acquaintance of the TSA men and women who worked at this airport. So I tried to ignore Abir, and the shakes started, right on schedule.



The trembling began with a barely noticeable twitch in my left index finger, but left unchecked, the twitching wouldn't stay barely noticeable for long. Taking a deep breath, I curled the offending finger, and two of its brethren, into the opening chord of "Take It Easy" by the Eagles, picturing my hand wrapped around the smooth neck of my knockoff Gibson acoustic.



Don't get me wrong. I liked newer music, too, but Eagles' songs had deceptively simple chord structures that even amateurs could quickly master. As founding members Don Henley and Glenn Frey had proven with hit after hit, sometimes greatness really was masked by simplicity.



"How they looking, sir?"



With a start, I shifted my attention from the phantom toddler to Jeremiah the shoeshine man, and then to my gleaming Ariat cowboy boots. The airport boasted quite a few shoeshine artists, but only one who'd acquired his skills at the polishing school of hard knocks-Marine boot camp.



"Fine job, Jeremiah."



"Thank you, sir," Jeremiah said, adjusting his ball cap over tufts of patchy white hair. "That'll be eight dollars."



Jeremiah's cap was fire-engine red with the words Vietnam Veteran emblazoned across the front in yellow stitching. Above the words hung an embroidered image of his Vietnam service ribbon. That was it. No unit designations, Special Forces tabs, or pins denoting previous ranks or medals. Just a faded red hat announcing that, unlike so many of his wayward generation, Jeremiah had answered his country's call to service. Though we'd shared numerous shines, Jeremiah had never once spoken about his time in Vietnam, but I knew that he'd been there. One, because he refused to talk about his service, and two, because he had the look.



With Jeremiah, the look manifested as an occasional stare into nothingness-a physical reaction to a mental trauma. In other words, Jeremiah's eyes had seen things that his mind wished he could somehow unsee.



I knew the feeling.



I took a ten and a five from my wallet and pressed the bills into Jeremiah's gnarled brown fingers.



"That's too much, Mr. Drake," Jeremiah said with a frown, the expression highlighting the web of wrinkles furrowing his ebony face.



"For the thousandth time," I said, "call me Matt. And the extra money isn't charity. It's to rent your chair for a spell."



Jeremiah shined my boots twice a week-every Monday and Friday at nine a.m.-and had done so for the past six weeks. Even so, we still had a variant of this conversation every time I sat down in one of the four high-backed chairs he called an office.



In a way, the normality associated with our routine was comforting. Some people had service dogs, a shrink on retainer, or a medicine cabinet stocked with pills. I had a seventy-year-old African American shoeshine artist and a secondhand guitar. I guess I was doing pretty well, all things considered.



"Them shakes ain't good, Mr. Drake," Jeremiah said, pointing a shoe-polish-stained finger at my trembling hand.



Or not.



The spasms had crept past my fingers, and now the muscles in my forearms were dancing. I mentally switched songs, from "Take It Easy" to "Ants Marching," trading the simple G-D-C progression for the series of vexing bar chords that Dave Matthews floated across so effortlessly.



No luck.



If I didn't stop the cycle soon, the tremors would evolve into something mirroring a full-fledged seizure, and that couldn't happen. Not now. Because the arrivals-and-departures monitor hanging over Jeremiah's right shoulder showed that the direct flight from San Diego had just arrived at gate five. In less than ten short minutes, my reason for sitting at this airport every Monday and Friday would cross the busy passenger thoroughfare in front of me, heading to gate nine and her connecting flight to Reagan. A ticket for that same flight rested in my right front pocket. Maybe today would be the day I finally used it.



"Mr. Drake?"



"It's Matt, Jeremiah-Matt."



"Mr. Drake, I think the Lord has a word for you."



I looked from the monitor to Jeremiah. This was unexplored territory. In the forty or so days we'd known each other, our conversations had never progressed past the safety of the superficial. Despite my nonregulation-length hair and scruffy beard, Jeremiah had seemed to intuit that he and I shared something of a history. Maybe it was because my broad shoulders and scarred knuckles seemed at odds with my carefully cultivated ragamuffin appearance.



Or maybe the look on my face mirrored his.



Either way, Jeremiah knew that he and I belonged to the same fraternity. Though I was probably at least forty years Jeremiah's junior, and his war had not been mine, we'd still enjoyed the quiet camaraderie of those who had seen the elephant and lived to tell the tale. But based on Jeremiah's earnest expression, this unacknowledged dŽtente was about to end.



"If you've got a message from the Almighty," I said, wearing a smile I didn't quite feel, "I'm all ears."



I risked a look to my right, toward the food court full of tables neatly arranged around a small raised stage. A kid in a retro T-shirt and faded jeans was strumming his way through a fairly respectable version of "Amy's Back in Austin." The space next to the breakfast taco stand, where I'd seen Abir waving from over her mother's shoulder, was now empty, but my shakes continued all the same.



"The Lord wants you to know," Jeremiah said, gripping my trembling forearm with surprisingly strong fingers, "that you can't go back."



At his touch, the tremors ceased. I started to ask the obvious question when two things happened in quick succession. One, the cell phone in my pocket began to vibrate. Two, a man slid into the chair next to mine.



A man with a gun.



Two



For most people, the buzzing of a cell phone is not a day-altering event. I am not most people. In the six weeks since I'd purchased the phone wedged into my right front pocket, it had never rung.



Not once.



This was because the number of people who knew it was in my possession totaled exactly one. Me.



Unlike the NSA Suite B-encrypted, government-issued smartphone that had been its predecessor, this cell was a simple burner I'd picked up at Costco with a pay-as-you-go plan. I'd left my old phone when I'd left my old life, but in my world, former lives had a way of intruding into new ones.



In the seat next to me, the man with a gun picked up one of the newspapers Jeremiah had arranged in neat piles for his customers. The above-the-fold headline read: Presidential Race Comes Down to the Wire.



That might have been the understatement of the century.



"Shine, sir?" Jeremiah asked.



The man with a gun nodded.



To be fair, my new friend was doing his best to pretend he wasn't armed. He had a stylish haircut, and he was wearing a sport coat, slacks, a button-down shirt, and lace-up dress shoes. I might not have even noticed the pistol holstered at his waist except that his sport coat was a bit too tight in the shoulders, forcing the fabric to gather in a familiar clump as he'd climbed into Jeremiah's chair.



Although he'd approached from my left, the man with a gun had ignored the first available empty chair in favor of the one to my right. A cynical person might have believed that he was trying to put as much space between me and the pistol on his right hip as possible.



Interesting.



I fished the vibrating phone from my pocket, looked at the number displayed on its screen, and sighed.



My former boss was a lot of things, but subtle he was not. Most calls originating from the Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters, located on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C., registered on caller ID as a string of random numbers.



But not when Branch Chief James Glass wanted your attention.



James had somehow rigged his phone so that the digits 911 repeating in sequence showed as the callback number. When James demanded your attention, he wanted there to be no doubt who was summoning you.



Still, contrary to what James might have believed, I was no longer in the DIA's employ. Now was as good a time as any to reinforce that message.



Flipping the still-pulsing phone on its side, I popped open the case, removed the SIM card, and snapped it in two. I considered saving the phone, but decided that safe was better than sorry. Turning, I pitched the components into the trash can next to my chair.



In theory, a new SIM card would have rendered the burner phone safe, but theories tended to pale when confronted with the technological might of the National Security Agency. Many a cocksure terrorist had been reduced to a Hellfire missile-induced cloud of organic vapor after the NSA cracked his supposedly impenetrable cell phone. Technically speaking, bringing the NSA's strength to bear against a U.S. citizen was illegal.



Then again, James didn't much stand for technicalities.



A multitone electronic chime, akin more to the warning klaxon of a nuclear reactor about to go critical than to a cell's ringtone, emanated from the armed man's jacket. With his nonshooting hand, my companion reached into his coat's interior pocket and came out with a BlackBerry that he put to his ear.



Jeremiah, who had glanced up when the phone first rang, wore a look of annoyance that quickly turned to something else when the armed man's sport coat briefly opened. The shoeshine artist's brown eyes found mine, and I slowly shook my head.



I didn't know what was going on and didn't much care so long as it concluded in the next two minutes and thirty seconds. Based on experience, that was when she would appear. Then, and only then, would I find out if this day would be any different from the slew of Mondays and Fridays that had preceded it.



"What?" the armed man said into his phone.



I ignored him in favor of searching the now-crowded thoroughfare for her familiar face.



A family of hipsters pushing a designer stroller jostled for space with a young girl in cutoff shorts carrying a guitar case over her shoulder. A businessman, talking into his cell, shuffled to his right, making way for a pair of cowboys in skintight Wrangler jeans and dusty boots.



This was Austin at her eccentric finest, but I had yet to see the purpose of my visit.



I had yet to see her.



"I've got him," the armed man said.



Any minute now. Unless . . .



I didn't follow the thought through to fruition. Couldn't. Not now. I needed to believe that today, things would be different. Instead of my transferring my unused ticket to a future flight yet again, things would return to normal. Today, I would board the flight to D.C.



"My name is Special Agent Rawlings," the armed man said, turning to me as he rested his phone on his leg. "I need you to come with me."



"No."



A space in the crowd opened. My heart beat faster.



"This isn't a request. Get out of the chair. Now."



The thing about federal agents was that they worked for bureaucracies, and bureaucracies had their own idiosyncrasies and tribal languages. Over the course of my five years with the DIA, I'd learned that clear, concise communication was critical when working with federal partners. With that in mind, I replied to Special Agent Rawlings in terms I knew that he'd understand.



"Fuck off."



I didn't know why Agent Rawlings had suddenly entered my life, and I didn't care. We were still in the great state of Texas, which meant that police officers could not just arrest people. Not without probable cause or an arrest warrant, anyway. Since my new friend hadn't used any of those magic words, he was relying on intimidation, rather than the force of law, to ensure my compliance. This was unfortunate for him because I didn't really do intimidation.



Rawlings said something in return, and though I'm sure it was both witty and relevant, I wasn't listening. She had just appeared.



Like the silence that breaks out when the houselights dim and the curtain slowly rises, the crowd's murmur faded as Laila took center stage. She'd once studied at the School of American Ballet and still moved with a dancer's measured grace. My role in this Greek tragedy wasn't yet finished-Agent Rawlings was waving over reinforcements while Jeremiah looked from me to the hulking federal agent, trying to pick a side-but I had eyes only for Laila.



To be fair, Laila was an exquisitely beautiful woman. Her Pakistani father and Afghan mother had provided her with a melting pot of genes from one of the most ethnically diverse territories on earth. The areas that were now Afghanistan and Pakistan had hosted countless foreign conquerors, from Alexander the Great to the Mongol Horde, and the region's collective influence was reflected in Laila's appearance. Her dark complexion, and the waves of midnight hair that tumbled to her shoulders, made her unexpectedly green eyes all the more striking.



Seeing her across a crowded room still caused my heart to stutter.



A second federal agent answered Rawlings's summons from the food court. He was clearly the muscle in the relationship and looked the part with his shaved head, Harley-Davidson T-shirt, jeans, and scuffed work boots. He was built like a fire hydrant, and the practiced ease with which his meaty hands found my left shoulder and arm suggested that this wasn't his first rodeo.