Chapter 3: Retirement

Seven Years Ago

Alexandria, Virginia

“Why are we doing this?”

Jonathan Swan returned the question with a look that said the speaker was an idiot. “Excuse me?”

“What did this poor asshole do to deserve our attentions?” specified Sam Wilcox.

“What does it matter? We were given the assignment. I am assigning it to you. You will finish the assignment.”

“The assignment, as you say, is a person. Before I finish the person, I’d like to know what he or she has done! I like to know why I am killing somebody before I do it!” replied Sam.

“Wilcox, I don’t have to tell you shit and you know it. My job is to select the best asset for the job. Your job is to terminate the assignment. You don’t need to know any more than that.”

Sam sighed and shook his head. “I might be assigned this person, but I need to know enough about him to do the job properly. So?”

Swan returned a shrug, and he tossed a file folder on the desk between them. “This is all you need to know.” Wilcox reached out to take it, but Swan kept his hand on it a few seconds longer. “And it’s not just the assignment; it’s the entire family. We need to send a message.”

“Excuse me? Since when do we do families?”

“Wilcox, don’t start thinking. It’s not what we pay you to do. Don’t make me rethink your employment with Balustre. Just do the assignment.”

Sam Wilcox stared briefly before picking up the folder and leaving.

This was not what Sam Wilcox had signed up for. He hadn’t had a lot of choice back then, but things had really gone downhill in the last two years. He had started out in the Army, been ‘drafted’ by the Central Intelligence Agency, and then been ‘RIF-ed’ - a reduction-in-force - to The Balustre Group two years ago. He had been selected because he had a rather unique skill set, and because he hadn’t much of a choice about it. Still, he had never signed up to kill families.

He reviewed the file. It was thin, not giving much more than the name and address of the assignment and her family. She was thirty-two, a mid-level tax lawyer in the Department of Energy, reviewing contracts for international natural gas sales and terminals. He couldn’t understand what she had done to deserve his special attentions, or why it was necessary to kill off her family. Husband, three young children; as far as he could determine, total innocents. Nothing about this made sense.

He turned to his computer and cranked up his browser. Facebook didn’t show anything unusual about the woman; it was mostly photos of her and her family, absolutely nothing worth killing somebody for. It had to be something professional. Nothing much showed up on Twitter or Instagram, though it was pretty obvious she was a Democrat. Still, that wasn’t worth killing over. Time to go deeper. Wilcox tapped into the terminal for PRISM, the National Security Agency program that collected and read emails and texts sent over the Internet. Next, he set up a separate window and tapped into the NSA ECHELON program, which accessed the telephone companies, and then finally into FINCEN, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, to search for any financial irregularities.

FINCEN showed nothing out of the ordinary for a typical suburban couple where both individuals worked for the government. They didn’t have a lot of cash and had a disturbingly high level of credit card debt, but they made their payments on time and tried pathetically to pay a little extra each month. Whatever it was that made her a target didn’t appear to be her finances.

ECHELON didn’t show that either one of them was talking to people they shouldn’t be. PRISM, on the other hand, showed some interesting things. Not about her husband, who seemed so boring as to be totally nonexistent, but about her. She was spending a lot of time investigating details about liquified natural gas contracts between a small and obscure Virginia energy company and the Ukraine. A few taps on the computer screen followed up those details and showed a pattern of responses from the Ukraine demanding the inquiries stop.

“What the hell are you doing?” demanded Swan, standing in the open doorway.

“Hmmm?”

“Why are you looking into the assignment? Your job is not to investigate, it is to eliminate!”

Wilcox immediately knew that his boss had been following his browser activity in real time, probably by some sort of keystroke logger. “Unless you want me to simply walk up to them in public with an Uzi and wipe them out, along with any bystanders, I need to know what they are about and up to. Is that what you want me to do?”

“No. Just do your job and do it quick!” He turned and stormed out.

Sam rolled his eyes and finished his research. Nothing he had seen showed that the assignment was a threat to the United States of America. What she was was a potential threat to some very wealthy individuals, people who were doing business in a fashion that was probably illegal and certainly corrupt.

Sam shut down his browser and stood up. He headed back to Swan’s office and said, “I’m heading out. Figure three days and the job is done. I’ll be back in a week or so.” Swan simply nodded in response.

Wilcox went back to his office and grabbed his jacket, and then went out to his car. It was time, and beyond, to retire.

Sam drove from the office in Alexandria to the Huntington Avenue Metro station. He parked and went around to the trunk, which he popped open. Aside from the usual items, like a spare tire and a tool kit with tow chains and a few flares, he had a gym bag, a ‘go bag’, a kit he could grab during an emergency; it contained a makeup kit and some spare clothing, as well as a small Sig Sauer 9 mm.

It was time to disappear. Balustre had had plenty of time to hide a micro-tracker on his car or in his possessions. He needed to lose everything he wore or carried. He tossed his suit coat into the trunk and then stripped off his tie and shirt. Even though he was standing in the open behind his car, he continued undressing, right down to the skin, and dressed in clothing from the go bag. He pulled on a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt and slipped into a pair of old running shoes. Then he grabbed the gym bag and pulled another small package from inside the flat spare tire. That got tossed into the gym bag. The final touch was a dark, unmarked hooded sweatshirt. He tossed his cell phone into the trunk, along with his wallet and pocket items, closed the trunk and locked the car, and then walked into the station, tossing the key fob into a trash can as he passed it.

From Huntington Station he rode around the Metro until he got to a station he knew a shopping mall was near. He left the Metro and walked to the mall. Once inside he found a clothing store and bought a complete set of clothing and paid for it in cash. Then it was off to a public restroom, where he changed clothing; the old clothing he put into the trash can in the bathroom. Next was a store that sold sports shoes, where he bought a new pair of running shoes, a ball cap, and a new hoodie; the old gear also ended up in the trash. Finally, he bought a new gym bag. After grabbing a meal in the food court, he sat down and sorted through the gym bag.