Chapter 16 - Codeword

Slowly awaking to the reality around him with an incredible sense of confusion and pain, Finne felt helpless. He was lying on his face exactly where he had collapsed onto the pavement. Without the benefit of his arms and hands to break his fall, Finne had taken the impact of his fall primarily to his left side. His left shoulder and ribcage felt as though they had been kicked hard and the left corner of his forehead just below his parted hairline throbbed and was no doubt the source of the blood smeared into his eye... He could not see and the thick fabric hood over his head was now constricting all of his ability to breathe. Scream, cough, breathe, roll, move, anything, help….fled through Finne’s mind as he passed back to unconsciousness.

All was black and still with an ultra high ring/squeal echoing in the nothingness that was Finne’s mind.

Then, a jolt upright and the blackness in front of him was violently replaced with harsh spot lighting from several directions. Finne could breathe, and he did at a distressed pace as if he had just finished an extensive workout. He could not see anything, though. His pupils had dilated excessively in the blackness of the hood, but now they retreated in physiological reaction to the intense brightness illuminating the scene around him.

An acrid smell pierced his nose and then lungs…ammonia…smelling salts..then a rush of adrenaline surged through his body and Finne quickly began to regain his situational awareness and the dream-like sequence of events that had just occurred. He began to see silhouettes of the bodies around him. Finne’s vision was hazy and he could not make out any details. Faces were not recognizable, but several people were now moving about within a few feet him. Finne squinted to try to see who had the gun. His nerves were still firing instructions to flee throughout the synapses of his mind and body. Then he realized that every figure he scrutinized was armed. Special Forces weaponry and tactics from his initial assessment. The black silhouettes were in-fact black jumpsuits worn by a team of soldiers that were silently securing and clearing the area around them.

Finne saw four bodies in brown jump suits being rolled into thick military issue body bags. A dark window-less van backed up to the pile of bodies and they were loaded in through the rear double doors by two soldiers in a matter of seconds. The large blood pools that remained on the road where the bodies had been looked to be as dark as midnight and not red as he had always seen before. Finne knew he was still in shock and he had no control over anything, including his capacity to rationalize what was happening.

“SNAP…SNAP…”

With each sound came freedom. First the cable tie around his hands had been cut. Next his feet. Instinctively, Finne reached for the .40 caliber Smith & Wesson he holstered on his right hip. He felt the holster but no weapon. Of course it must have been taken when he was first apprehended but he couldn’t recall losing it.

“Here is your sidearm, Mr. Seldnak.” A stoic and steady voice offered from his right. Finne’s eye’s adjusted to behold a battle-worn leatherneck stereo-type straight out of central casting approaching him with Finne’s gun extended toward him handle first. “It is fully loaded, as you left it. Fifteen in the clip and one in the chamber. Safety is on.”

Unable to make sense of this clandestine introduction, “Who?..What?..” were the only words Finne could manage to utter.

“Please come with me. I will explain.” Said the spook who handed him his gun. A dark SUV pulled up to the two men and Finne’s new acquaintance opened the rear door and extended a hand gesturing his offer to help Finne climb up into the truck. Finne accepted as he was not confident in his balance and was hoisted into rear of the cab and into his new reality.

The vehicle he was sitting in was equipped with command and control systems that Finne had never imagined before. At least ten monitors lined the entire front bulkhead between the driver and the passenger’s compartment. Each displayed a different set of images, video, data, and intelligence mash-ups that appeared harmonized and fluent across each channel. Satellite imagery on one screen plotted a configuration of thermal images in the middle of a dark void. The vehicle thrust forward and Finne watched in real time as the center thermal signature on the screen moved in tandem with the SUV. A second and third SUV followed in behind the truck in which Finne was riding and the thermal imagery reflected a three vehicle motorcade exiting a circle of smaller thermal points – likely the special ops personnel Finne could see encircling the scene of his capture/rescue/abduction. It was a single detail in the few seconds Finne glimpsed out the window of his convoy as it fled away at an accelerating pace that convinced him he was dealing with the dark world of spooks and national security and not an FBI hostage rescue team.

Finne had long hunted deer in the woods of Pennsylvania with both rifle and bow. His father introduced him to hunting and much of his thick skin for blood and gore came from time spent with his father bleedin’ deer and field cleaning carcasses after a successful hunt. Those formative experiences had ingrained the image of trophy buck being dragged back to camp by hind legs to allow the blood draining from its slit throat to trail behind and away from the body during tow. That was exactly what Finne saw over his shoulder and out the corner of his eye in an instant during the escape. One of the soldiers in black with his MP-5 slung over his shoulder, was dragging the recently slaughtered carcass of a large buck across the road spewing the lifeless animal’s blood across the road such that it mixed and masked the blood pools from the four bodies he had seen taken from the scene. How did they know they would need that and where did they find one so conveniently close to this ambush. Was the deer brought to the location already dead? Or did one of the Ranger Seal Delta Force killers out there just take one down in the woods in an instant of improvisation as they are taught to do in all of the elite military forces?

Finne understood that everything that had just taken place was precisely executed and from the amount of information streaming to the consoles in front of him, had been watched and possibly recorded by at least one set of all-seeing eyes.

“Finne, what do you remember about President Kennedy?” the man sitting across from Finne asked.

“Huh?...I was eight years old when he was shot. I remember the day just like I remember 9/11.” Finne replied.

“What do you remember about the time you met him?” was the retort.

Silence.

“I didn’t expect you to acknowledge the event. You have guarded that secret with your father since you were six years old. I am sure you now understand that I know about that meeting, what was said, and the fallout that still lingers to this day.” The master-sergeant looking man offered in a matter-of-fact and non-threatening tone.

“No one is supposed to know about that.” Finne uttered, surprising himself, as he had never even considered acknowledging what happened to anyone ever before. But if he knew, he must know a lot. Maybe more than me, Finne considered.

“Did you know my father?” Finne asked.

“Yes. It was an honor to work with him. He was a hero to this country and the small community that knows what really happened that day in the Oval Office holds him in the highest regards of honor.”

“Who are you?” was Finne’s next question.

“Consider me to be your guardian angel.”

“What should I call you?” Finne replied in frustration with the non-answer.

“Jack will work.”

“Not Colonel or Commander John?” Finne offered in an attempt to see if a military rank would be disclosed and to see how a bit of jesting would be taken.

“Jack, please.”

“Why do I need a guardian angel?” Finne inquired, although he was quite happy to have one given the rescue his angel just provided.

“Consider this your read in. The information I am about to disclose to you is classified at the highest level, truly.”

“I am cleared TS/SCI with access to compartmental programs and law enforcement intelligence. As an Inspector General with IRS am able to access…” Finne began but was interrupted.

“Watchkeeper.”

“What?” Finne interjected.

“Mr. Seldnac your clearance is codeword Watchkeeper. There is not one higher. In fact, only the President, National Security Advisor, Director of National Intelligence, Director of Central Intelligence, National Security Agency Administrator and six other living persons share the same level of intelligence access eligibility that you do. You, sir are a captain of industry within the intelligence apparatus. I am the director of security for your office. My name is Jack Wooten.”

“My office…captain of the intelligence industry…WTF? I’m a detective. I chase after the guys that steal from the revenue that feeds them. I keep the IRS clean and clear of cheats and thieves. What are you talking about?”

“Are you familiar with implanted comms?” Jack asked.

“Of course,” said Finne. “We use them as standard operating procedure during undercover work. Actually, I have always had technical difficulties with them and prefer the old-school hand signals for communicating covertly between agents during a mission.”

“Yes. The early generations of the technology did interfere with your primary implant. We had a hard time working out the dual channel interference. I assume you tended to experience high pitched static?”

“How did you know that? I never reported equipment problems after the first time in any of my paperwork because I feared that they would blame my hearing and put me on a medical review.” Finne revealed. “And what primary implant?”

Jack reached toward a keyboard in front of his seat and entered a series of keystrokes without answering.

Suddenly, Finne was aware. Streams of information began pouring into his head and his reality was permanently altered as the device lodged below his right ear deep into the tissue around his spinal chord sparking instantaneous neural activity and responses that he had never felt before.

Finne was definitely on the other side of the looking glass now.

“Welcome to the rest of your life.” Jack offered.