THE EAGLE AND THE ARROW A. J. O’Connell
Being the director of a secret agency isn’t easy; we have almost no budget, all of our agents are stupid kids and extremists, and my boss is a corrupt senator, but it’s a decent job. Or it was, until a few months ago, when an important package disappeared and one of our agents went rogue, killing three men. Now she’s in Guantanamo, and I’ve got orders to deal with her. Personally. Also by A. J. O’Connell
BEWARE THE HAWK Sure, being a courier for a secret, possibly terrorist society has its risks, but the pay was worth it. At least I thought it was until I was ordered to make a late-night run to Boston to meet an opiumaddicted, vodka-addled contact, who blows the deal. Now I am being hunted as I hobble, injured through the streets of Beantown. When I discover a gun and my new assignment, I wonder if perhaps I made a bad career choice.
“An Eagle that was watching upon a Rock once for a hare, had the ill Hap to be struck with an Arrow. This Arrow, it seems was feather’d from her own Wing, which very Consideration went nearer her Heart, she said, then Death itself.” — Aesop’s Fables, L’Estrange’s translation (1692)
MONDAY Tall chain-linked fences, topped with barbed wire. Gravel, sand. A lone palm tree under a cloudless sky casting a shadow on walls of concrete. There are men in orange jumpsuits on their knees in the gravel. Soldiers stand over them. The prisoners are blind, their faces covered by hoods. Some rock back and forth. Are they facing Mecca, or are they just kneeling where the soldiers tell them to kneel? When I stop to look, my escort turns and gives me a firm look. “Move along, ma’am.” So I do. Her cell is a little room with blank, white walls and an arrow slit for a window. She’s folded up against one of the walls when I first see her. The mug shot I saw showed her hair as short and pink, but she’s changed since that photo was taken. The pink hair is growing out. Despite the gorgeous Cuban weather outside, she’s pale. Pink ends, brown roots, white skin — all the colors of Neapolitan ice cream. She stands when I enter and starts talking. She talks for an hour, without stopping, as if she’s been saving up every detail of her life for my visit. But I know her story. I know it better than I want to know it, and I know she likes to tell it. I’ve read all the statements she’s given since her arrest. Her big mouth is the reason she’s down here. “You know,” she says, after what seems an eternity of babble. “I was kind of looking forward to the trial.” I’m not listening to her. I take out my phone. I need to check my email. It’s only Monday, but there’s always a backlog when I’m not in the office. I wonder if I can get reception in Guantanamo. “I was kind of hoping I’d actually find out what the Resistance is,” she says. I make a noncommittal noise. No service, but there is wi-fi: Gitmo1. I try it, but it needs a password.
“Do you know?” I look up. The kid was pale before, but now she looks gray in the face. She’s staring at my hand. “It’s not like I’m going to get the chance to tell anyone, right? I recognize that iPhone. I know why you’re here.” “Enough of this.” I stand up and smooth out the sundress I’m wearing under my jacket. I dressed up for Guantanamo a little. I wasn’t stopping in at the office this morning; so why not ditch the suit? I think it was the idea of taking a flight to someplace tropical. If I don’t look at the barbed wire, I can almost convince myself that I’m on vacation. I haven’t had a vacation since 2002. “You like to talk,” I say. She’s silent for the first time. “Well that’s the last time you tell that story. I want you to get used to that idea right now, while we’re still here in this cell.” “You’re going to kill me.” She winds her arms tightly across her chest, and I realize how big her orange jumpsuit is on her. “Sadly, I’m not,” I say. “I’m here to remove you.” “Probably in a body bag.” “Let me finish talking, kid, or maybe I’ll leave you here.” Her eyes widen as the prospect of freedom sinks in and battles with her fear. “We’re taking you out of here and bringing you back to the U.S. You will live under supervision. You will return to work for us.” “I don’t want to work for the Resistance again,” she says, but it sounds half-hearted. I see her eyes darting to the door and to the hall behind me. Mentally, she’s already out of her cell. I have a photo album prepared for this. I open the app on my phone. “If you don’t,” I say. “If you tell that Boston story one more time, if you give us any trouble whatsoever, bad things will happen to these people.” I press play and turn the screen of my phone toward her. She recoils from the phone itself, but her eyes are glued to the photos of her roommates in Brooklyn, her mother in Westport, her sister in Brookline, and Detective Daniel Nulty of the Boston Police Department. “Do you understand?” I drop the phone back into my purse.
She nods. “Good. Let’s go.” I rap on the door for the soldier. The guard opens the door. She seems reluctant, but I know she has her orders. “I still think you’re going to kill me,” says the kid as she’s marched out into the hot sun. “If I wanted you dead, you’d never have made it out of Boston.” The sad truth is that, thanks to the red tape that follows me through almost every aspect of my professional life, I don’t have a lot of control over the things that go on in my department, but I could have had her killed. It would have been easier than getting the office copy machine repaired.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A.J. O’Connell is not a spy. She is an author, a journalist and adjunct instructor. Her first book, Beware the Hawk, was published in 2012 by Vagabondage Press and she’s also been published on the website for National Public Radio, in The Battered Suitcase, Citizen Culture Magazine and in several anthologies. As a reporter, she worked for the Norwalk Hour. She holds her MFA in Creative Fiction from Fairfield University and is a member of both Sisters in Crime and the New England Horror Writers. A.J. lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut with her husband and a house full of pets. If you want to learn more about her, visit www.ajoconnell.com.