Active Shooter Page 2

  Bridget grinned as she tapped on her smartphone. “Check it out,” she said, showing me the screen and coming so close her hair tickled my ear. “Hashtag Esperanza is getting some crushing traffic. Here's my favorite: 'Esperanza means hope for America'.”

  “Sources of hope must be scarce.”

  “We're set for lunch, then? I'll have my driver pick you up.”

  “I never said yes,” I replied.

  “An oversight, no doubt,” she said with a wink.

  I took in Bridget's appearance again, once more noting first how neither her blond hair nor her blue eyes nor her fine features coincided with stereotypical notions for what someone named Suarez should look like. Then I admitted to myself why I really agreed to do the interview: I wanted to at least toy with the notion I might have a chance with someone this beautiful, this glamorous, this successful.

  “You like Cuban?” she asked with a smirk.

  “Every time I look in the mirror.”

  She giggled. “Just do me a favor. Leave your phone in your room. Leave it on, plugged into your charger and connected to the hotel's Wi-Fi network. Go ahead and order a movie, preferably one that lasts at least two hours, and leave it playing when you leave.”

  I felt my brow fold into a frown.

  “In case someone asks hotel staff whether you're in your room,” she said. But her tone and wry smile told me I should know better than believe so simple an answer.

  Chapter 2

  After hedging for a couple of minutes, I agreed, electing to play along to see where this led. Bridget had her assistant escort me to a back entrance and usher me out to an awaiting black sedan, but not before she handed me a NY Mets cap and aviator sunglasses. She didn't say, and I didn't ask. But I understood the implied suggestion to also wear these items later in the morning, 11:30 sharp, per our agreement, when I was to walk out of my Hotel and step into the same black sedan, in disguise, while back in my room two electronic data streams indicated my continued presence there.

  The drive to the hotel frustrated me. On foot I would have made it there in half the time. This is a big turn off for me, traffic. I hate how it traps you and sucks your time, your very life, really. I told myself what I usually tell myself: I couldn't do anything about it unless you stay at point A, so just go along and put up until I get to point B.

  I sank into the plush leather seat and let my mind wander. It kept going back to the traffic. I noted that in contrast to L.A. traffic, where you sit atop wide concrete conduits, here it felt more intimate, close-up, in your face, louder, certainly since horns served as frequent a function as steering wheels, brakes and accelerators.

  Then we were there, my driver opening the door, a bellman asking me if I had some luggage for him to carry. I waved him off and scurried inside to find an elevator and make it into my room before anyone recognized me.

  I clicked on the TV because that's the first thing that you do when alone in a hotel room, hungry for electronic companionship. One of the local morning talk shows was replaying bits of my interview. I checked my smartphone, too. Where normally I would have killed for a blazing hot Twitter feed, now I moaned when I saw it. They weren't Tweeting about my epic-awesome photography. They were going on about Andre Esperanza the killer.

  In my mind I replayed the image of Bridget grinning at me, almost bragging about how hot she'd made my hashtag. I wondered what else that grin meant.

  I spent the better part of the next two hours anticipating how much of my past up-and-coming, hard-driving investigative reporter Bridget Suarez knew. I told myself not to get paranoid. Unless she had in-deep sources, she could know little beyond my past career as an information security and assurance specialist who might have worked on a defense contract or two. She would have no way of knowing what jewels of the kingdom I had designed or deployed. She would not know how I'd come to know my way around guns and flash-bangs. She would not know my body count exceeded six terrorists in LAX by a factor of two. Nevertheless, the seeming familiarity with which she suggested I conceal my movements with the movie, the disguise, and a left-behind cellphone gave me an unshakable uneasy feeling.

  I went into the bathroom and washed my face, as if that could refresh away my unease. When I came out, my phone buzzed once. The screen lit up with an incoming message notification from “Withheld.”

  “Play along,” it said.

  I noticed I had stopped breathing.

  Push ups and deep breathing usually helped with the type of panic attack I felt coming on. Twenty push ups later, I rose to my feet to do the breathing thing, and I went over to my phone to delete the message.

  There. Like it never happened.

  ***

  Three hours later, with the three hour long Lord of the Rings movie rolling the opening sequence, I walked out of my room. I took the elevator down to the third floor, then used the stairs to descend to a less central and visible spot in the lobby. From there, I scanned my surroundings for surveillance operatives and elected the most efficient pathway to the front of the hotel. Timing my steps and movements, I walked out the front door at 11:30 sharp. As promised, the same black sedan and driver awaited me.

  Not entirely familiar with New York, I nonetheless noted the drive to our final destination did not follow the most direct route. Normally, I would have questioned a taxi driver who wound his way through town that way. This time, as I watched him check his mirrors, I knew my driver didn't do so to pad my cab fare.

  The Cuban restaurant turned out to be Guantanamera, not far from Central Park, one of the spots on my to-see-and-do list before my celebrity changed my mind about meandering my way around the city. I walked in, transitioning from brightness into the dim interior. Without having to say who I was meeting, the young lady at the entrance gestured toward the back. Past the bar, I saw Bridget, deep into the restaurant, waiving at me from a booth.

  “If you don't mind, I'd like to sit facing the entrance,” I told her when I reached the table.

  She raised an eyebrow and shot me a knowing smile. “Sure. You're probably better about situational awareness than I am.”

  We switched seats. I removed the baseball cap and sun glasses. Beneath me, I felt the warmth she'd left behind. The sensation sent a shiver through me.

  “I'm guessing this is the post-interview,” I said.

  “So direct.”

  “I like it that way.”

  “That's no fun. Why not just take the time to enjoy a bit of social interaction and see where it leads?”

  I smiled while my eyes scanned the front of the restaurant. A tall, lean man wearing a powder blue Guayabera shirt entered and took a seat at the bar. In his right ear I saw the sort of earpiece that looks like it pairs with a cellphone, but from which dangled a thin, translucent fiber not required for commercial versions of such devices.

  I turned my gaze to Bridget and said, “Here's more direct for you. Unless this is strictly social, unless a successful gal like you wants to be charmed off her feet by an intriguing, hash-tagged hero, I'm not interested.”

  “It's all or nothing with you, isn't it?” she said. “What if a girl just wants to say thanks by taking a guy out to lunch?”

  “You really expect me to believe that someone in your strata would take an interest in a guy like me?”

  “That's not the kind of sexy confidence that peeks a girl's interest,” she replied.

  I shot her a hard stare, doing my best to pretend I really did believe she was beyond my reach.

  She sighed and said, “Just hear me out.”

  “This is me being a good listener.”

  Bridget leaned over the table and lowered her voice “I'm doing an investigation into Special Cyber Ops. TechOps?" She paused, baiting me to react.

  I didn't.

  She went on with, "You may have heard of them? The sort that mean I shouldn't have my cellphone with me when I'm having sensitive conversations?”

  The world seemed to grow quiet around me. My mind fought for cla
rity and could only arrest panic. For now.

  “Or if that’s too much,” she added, “perhaps you can tell me about inter-agency coordination and cross-jurisdictional operations.” She paused again, waiting for my reaction. I did my best to maintain a blank expression.

  She added, “Those are the nice phrases to make us feel better after 911. Just to make sure everyone feels safe. Rumor has it these cross-jurisdictional folks are actually running the show, way behind the curtains, back there in the shadows. Cross-strappers, people in the know call them. That ring a bell?”

  My back stiffened and a tingling sensation fluttered in my stomach.

  I eyed Guayabera man. He had just shifted in his seat, straightening up as if readying to pounce into action. Though he wasn't looking at us, I could tell he was using the bar's backdrop mirror to watch us. Only God knew how we was listening to our conversation, but I could manage a couple of guesses.

  If I was on edge before, now I felt myself sink to another level. Bridget knew more than I anticipated. She knew enough, anyway -- enough to tell me to leave my cellphone back in the hotel to avoid GPS tracking, and enough not to have hers with her lest it be hacked to work as a listening device. Someone reading techno-thrillers or watching TV spy series episodes would have known as much.

  But they wouldn’t know about the cross-strappers.

  My real concern? She knew enough to connect me with that sort of technological trickery. She knew enough to connect me with a world of shadows and operators no one this side of the curtain was supposed to know about. More dangerous than that, she seemed to have no clue that in spite of all that, we were still under surveillance.

  My mind raced, not so much to sort out what she knew about me as to decipher how she knew it, and whether I should confirm it or provide additional details. I found myself torn between my initial intent to keep my past sealed and an almost irrepressible urge to impress her with it. I thought about how I would tell her, what I would leave in, what I would withhold, all the while knowing that whatever I shared would amount to little more than unsubstantiated tales from a has-been.

  “Do you really think this is proper lunch conversation?” I asked, by which I meant that the topics she wanted to discuss required a different, secured venue.

  “The American people need to know this, Andre.”

  “The American people are long past beyond need.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It's all about what they want,” I replied. “The big flat-screen TV, the RV, preferably attached to a boat trailer, the big house, the fancy fast car, season tickets to their favorite team's home games. They've all gone way past what they need and it's all about what they want. And so long as they get that, do they really want to know about anything else?”

  “Well, it's what I want, Andre. With every bit of me. I want to let them know.”

  I pushed back with, “The journalistic quest sounds good, but who are you really working for?”

  She frowned and opened her mouth halfway as if I had spoken in some lost language. “For the network. For myself. I'm thinking of writing a book about this.”

  I weighed her answer. It wouldn't be the first time a reporter cooperated with U.S. Intelligence. This foray of hers could be a test to ensure I was still trustworthy, still keeping my little secrets in the black recesses of my mind. It could be entrapment to get me to do their bidding. For all I knew, the they behind all this were the cross-strappers themselves.

  Or I was letting my mind twist into gnarled complications because that sort of thought pattern had become my natural way of thinking, with distrust, deceit, and ill intent the starting points and foundation to my logic.

  Perhaps Bridget was just as she represented, an enterprising reporter sniffing out an interesting story. Perhaps I was reading too much into this, giving her too much credit when she only knew enough disparate tidbits to sound informed, but not enough to assemble the grand puzzle. Once more, I told myself not to be paranoid.

  “Tell me about these Tech Ops, Bridget. Just to make sure I'm landing on your page.”

  “Surveillance, hacking, Cyber warfare. Information gathering through technological means.” Her eyes narrowed, scanning my reaction for the slightest indication of how close to the target her salvo had come.

  “You mean the stuff any pimple-faced teenager with a souped up laptop can do?”

  She smiled and tilted her head. “I mean the stuff our taxpayer dollars buy.”

  “With Snowden available in sunny Moscow, you're asking a starving photographer, part-time teacher about this?”

  “Photographer, part-time teacher.” She smiled. “Both worthy professions, neither of which have been paying your bills very long. It's been what? A little over one year since you left your last job?”

  “Am I really that interesting? Was it really worth it to dig into my past?”

  “That's what I'm trying to find out.”

  “Look, Bridget. I wish I could help--”

  “Do you, really? Wish you could help?”

  “I can't.”

  “I protect my sources.”

  I almost told her she should worry about protecting herself. “It's not going to work.”

  “Why not?”

  I stood up. Bridget scarcely made a gesture to stop me and said nothing to prevent my exit, mostly because I didn't give her any time to do so.

  On the way out I passed Guayabera man. Looking at me in the bar's mirror, he gave me an almost imperceptible nod. He followed me out of the restaurant and stayed about half block behind me, content to let me wind through side streets on my way back to my hotel.

  Along the way, and as I entered the hotel's lobby, my lack of a disguise caused many double-takes and more than a few knowing looks, though mercifully, no autograph requests. From the lobby's cocktail lounge area, a smiling, rosy cheeked man shouted, “Where did you learn to shoot like that?” To which I resisted replying with, “Not at the neighborhood shooting range.”

  I briefly considered taking the stairs to my 14th floor room. More than the physical effort it required, the thought of getting cornered in a stairwell by Guayabera man and his colleagues did not appeal to me. I walked to the elevator, turned, and waited for him to catch up. He welcomed this with a wink.

  With what I read as a disguised bow, he pressed the elevator call button. A ding signaled an awaiting car. He waved me in and entered after me, already reaching into his jacket to extract his ID, which in another second he was flashing to a trio of smiling women before they could join us in the elevator.

  “Official business,” he said with a soft smile. “Please take the next elevator. Thank you.”

  He pressed the 14th button, the doors closed, and I waited for the upward jolt before asking, “I take it we need to talk?”

  With an index finger to his lips, his smile now extinguished, he said, “Not here.”

  “You know they're already Tweeting that a Fed and Andre the hero are taking an elevator ride.”

  “Not here.”

  We entered my room a couple of minutes later. There, with annoyance rather than surprise, I met another man, sitting by the small desk next to the bed, dressed in a plain gray business suit and black tie. He closed my password protected laptop, where he'd passed the time rummaging through my files, and swiveled in the chair to face me.

  “I'll be outside,” Guayabera man said, and he closed the door behind me.

  “Nice pictures,” my guest said pointing at my laptop. “You're building quite the portfolio.”

  The logical reaction at this point would have been to act outraged. I chose to not be predictable. I took off my shoes and rearranged the pillows to make a comfortable seat on the bed. Then, as if he weren't there, I turned on the TV, brought up the on-demand movie menu, and scrolled to the adult section.

  He cleared his throat. “If I can't have your undivided attention here, we can talk elsewhere.”

  “What topic do you have in mind?”

  “
Your discretion.”

  “That's a superfluous discussion.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why aren't you?”

  “Oh, let's see. Because you gave a reporter an interview, and she's now ready to pump you for all you've got?”

  "This is where you tell me what I've done wrong, or you leave me alone."

  "Think a little, Andre," he said. "What could she possibly want with you?"

  “She just wants to make a name for herself and a few bucks while she's at it.” I turned off the TV and faced him. “It's the American way. You know, the very thing your precious mission with its little secret methods and tools is supposed to protect.”

  “You could have been more definitive with her,” he said.

  “You mean I could have lied.”

  “You said enough to further peak her interest. She won't let it go.”

  “When I signed my NDA, the one that lands me in jail if I spill your precious, it said nothing about lying.”

  “It said you would protect--”

  “What do you want?”

  “To make sure you're not divulging what you shouldn't.”

  “Would we be talking here if I had?”

  He grinned at me and shifted in his seat.

  “I've kept my end of the deal,” I added, perhaps sounding more defensive that I wanted to. “Your end says you leave me alone.”

  “You endangered your end of the deal when you had to play superhero in a terrorist-infected terminal.”

  “You wouldn't have done the same.”

  “I would have called 911.”

  “Excuse me. That's right. Of course you would.”

  “But you're so much better. A hero.”

  I looked away and stared at the black TV screen. I could see an outline of myself there, a shadow. For a moment I wondered whether a photo of that outline would represent all that was left of me.

  “I guess I enjoy killing,” I said. “Isn't that what my personnel file says?”