Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (44 page)

The soft thump of multiple boot soles on hard concrete
reverberated in the short hallway. A hallway that was already crowded and was
fast becoming standing room only. In the dim illumination cast from the single
low wattage bulb, Michelle could see almost a dozen military uniforms in
various patterns of camouflage. Six more soldiers, Estes’s squad, were behind
her. Lieutenant Estes led the herd with Andy following. Colonel Jordan was
third in line and directly in front of her. Intentionally. They had managed to
sell their story so far, but the hardest part of all was coming up, and
Michelle was sure that as soon as the boot steps stopped echoing, her pounding
heart would give them away.

“
Suck
it up Michelle . . . take a deep breath
,”
she repeated again in her mind, maybe for the thousandth time in the last hour.
Michelle replayed Andy’s instruction over again.

“
Look ‘em in the eyes like they owe you money. Count to
three and if they’re still looking at you, immediately drop eye contact . . . not
down though, slide your eyes off sideways and find another target. Pretend you’ve
just been asked to your senior prom by an ugly fat boy five years younger than
you. Imagine that he asks you which condoms are your favorite brands and how
many he should bring. Disdain. That’s the look you want on your face, like everything
is so far beneath you it almost doesn’t exist,
” Andy had said.

The hardest part had been learning to move her eyes sideways
off the target. It was natural to look down when breaking eye contact, maybe a
throwback to their animal nature. In almost every pack situation that Michelle
could think of, the loser was the one that looked down first. Wolves, lions,
hyenas—they all established dominance with eye contact. Of course, there was also
a bit of talon shredding, fang snapping, flesh-rending knock-down drag-out
fights every now and then. If it came down to that, there was no doubt that she
and Andy would get the short end of the stick.

“We can’t afford a physical conflict. We will lose. Badly. And
immediately,”
Andy
had said.

Practicing back at her house had almost seemed comical. Thompson
and Andy taking turns being her "target" and gauging her reaction as
she shifted between them. Any semblance to comedy disappeared when in the midst
of one of their rehearsals, Michelle turned towards Andy only to run her
forehead into his index finger. Three lower fingers curled back against his palm
along with his upraised thumb completed the picture. Andy made a soft
click
. . . boom
while dropping his thumb hammer forward. His statement made her
blood run cold.

"
I didn't believe you. You’re dead,
” he had
whispered.

From then on it was all business.

And to make matters worse, Michelle’s thighs were killing her.
Another one of Andy’s ideas was the felt on the bottom of her shoes.

“Perception. That’s the first rule of covert warfare. People
see what they want to see, even if it’s not there. Especially if it’s not there.
We don’t have to sell them the whole bushel of their fear. As a matter of fact,
we don’t want to. What we need to do is paint the outline and let their own
minds do the artwork. You’ve got to come across as someone very dangerous. Anybody
you come in contact with once we’re inside has to immediately develop the
impression that you are a killer, a predator . . . the personal representative
of the Grim Reaper. You are death on toast. And death is silent. I’ve been
hunting with you, I know you can move quietly through the woods. We’re going to
give you a little help moving silently in the school . . .”
Andy had said as they applied some
self stick felt to the bottoms of Michelle’s flats.

A quick test on the linoleum floor of her small kitchen had
indeed shown a reduction in noise on each of her already quiet footsteps. It
had also just about made Michelle split her face open at the first turn. If
Thompson hadn’t caught her she’d be sporting a busted nose at the very least. They
had quickly figured out that felt on linoleum was very slippery. It was like
learning to walk in high heels for the first time. Once she got the hang of it
however, it was workable. As long as she didn’t have to run. Or stand still for
extended periods. In that case, her natural stance would gradually allow her
feet to slowly creep further and further apart. Eventually she’d be doing a
split on the floor, and while Thompson teased that the position could be useful
for certain . . . ahem, “situations”, they all had their doubts as to whether
it would give the impression of a stone cold killer. To prevent her feet from
sliding she had to lock her thigh muscles any time she stood still. Adding to
the discomfort was Andy’s little 380 pistol she had attached to the inside of
her thigh with duct tape and, much to the boy’s surprise, a red lace garter. She
had tried several times to come up with a workable solution to carry her Glock
in the same location, but it was too bulky.

Their small parade came to a halt directly in front of the
gathered group of soldiers crowded into the faintly lit corridor. On the left
side of the hallway Michelle could see the pass-through windows made from chain
link mesh. Some type of flexible metal door had been lowered just on the other
side of the mesh, preventing her from seeing beyond. In front of the covered
window stood three scruffy faced soldiers in digital khaki BDU’s. Each of them
had an orange arm band tied around their left bicep. Seven more soldiers, two
of them female, had positioned themselves between the trio and the metal
doorway on the left side of the hall. A quick look at the gathered faces showed
a mixture of smugness and apprehension. Then they noticed Andy. Michelle
watched several eyes widen and shift at the appearance of Mr. Glass’s crisply
pressed suit as Andy, smiling, stepped out from behind Estes. It was almost
like he was enjoying this. She wasn’t.

Andy spoke. “Tango Three, stand down. Your orders are being
modified.”

Michelle couldn’t see Colonel Jordan’s expression, only the
back of his head. From its downward inclination she guessed that he looked like
a whipped puppy dog to those in front of him. Not good, and not what he was
supposed to do. Her right hand firmed its grip on the stainless steel pistol
riding in the shoulder holster under her jacket.

One of the soldiers in the Tango Three trio had gone to
attention at Andy’s command. Michelle saw the other two exchange glances and
then tighten their grips on their rifles. One of them, a tall broad shouldered
man with scruffy red hair and close-set eyes spoke.

“Colonel Jordan, are those your orders sir?”

The colonel mumbled something unintelligible. Three seconds
of silent tension passed. Michelle’s thumb softly clicked open the snap holding
the pistol in place. She had no illusions of what would happen if it came down
to a firefight in the narrow hallway. Besides, her gun . . .

Michelle’s thought was interrupted by Andy.

“Son, I want you to think back to when you were in the
seventh grade. That time when your grandma caught you whacking off to the
pictures in the dirty magazine you found in your dad’s night stand.” Andy stepped
around Estes and moved up into the face of the soldier who had spoken. “I want
you to remember, really think back and remember how it felt to know that your
dirty little secret was out. You know, that certainty of knowledge that no
matter what you did from that point on, the cork was off and the genie was out
of the bottle. I want you to remember the shame and embarrassment that stayed
with you for months as your pudgy little fingers tried to separate the pages
you stuck together with your own special little glue gun. And I want you to
remember how you swore to yourself that you wouldn’t do something so stupid
again.”

Michelle noticed a slight cast of red creep into the soldiers
face. Anger or embarrassment, she couldn’t tell. Still locking eyes with the
leader of Tango Three, Andy spoke. “Patrol scouts Echo Bravo Niner, to the
rear.”

“Yes sir,” one of the female soldiers snapped. “Squad, fall
in.”

Michelle watched as a snaking line of soldiers moved to the
side of the hallway and quick-stepped past the three orange arm-banded men. Five
seconds later they had moved to the rear of Estes’s squad.

“Where were we?” Andy said to the broad shouldered Tango
Three speaker who towered over him and the hallway. “Oh yeah, I remember. You
were trying to decide if you could waste me right here in the tunnel. You’re
thinking that if you did that, the colonel here would stop pouting like a
little schoolgirl and you’d still get to be the big men on campus.”

Sixty watts of compact fluorescent light was enough for
Michelle to see the soldier tighten his grip on his rifle. His finger was
already on the trigger.

Andy inched closer, almost touching the chest of the tall
soldier with his chin as he looked up. “Well boy, do it. Do it if you’ve got
the stones,” Andy snarled.

Quick as a flash Lieutenant Estes raised his gun and pointed
it at the Tango Three leader. Michelle heard the six men behind her follow
suit.

“DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID!” Estes shouted at the trio.

Michelle saw a cascade of emotion pass across the tall
soldiers face . . . saw his brow furrow and his eyes narrow. She caught the
slight lowering of his body as it tensed. As it coiled up.

The dry metallic click of a pistol’s safety being moved to
the off position sounded like thunder in the cement tunnel. The third member of
Tango Three, the only one who had saluted when Andy had told them to stand down
now had the barrel of his Beretta 9mm a foot from the temple of Andy’s opponent.

“I ain’t going down for you, Weaver. I told you this frat boy
shit would come full circle and bite us in the ass.”

Bolstered by his team member’s bravery, the second member of Tango
Three slowly lowered his rifle to the ground and said, “Come on Weev’ . . . it
ain’t worth it.”

Estes half-stepped over and grabbed the barrel of Weaver’s
rifle, forcing it against resistance to the side.

“Take a look around Weaver; you don’t have any friends left. Drop
the gun. Now,” Estes said in a voice that was much calmer then Michelle was
sure she’d have used.

Weaver jerked his eyes away from the staring contest he’d
been having with the Andy long enough to confirm that he was indeed alone. Slowly
releasing his finger from the trigger guard he relinquished his weapon into
Estes’s custody.

Andy nodded towards Estes’s squad, and in the space of
several minutes they had Tango Three fully disarmed and kneeling on the floor
in handcuffs.

Michelle let out a sigh of relief. Perhaps too loud. Her
exhalation had caused Estes to look her way, and in the brief eye contact they
shared, she caught a glimpse of . . . what . . . confusion, curiosity, maybe
evaluation. And the icing on that particular cake was that she dropped her eyes
straight down. Shit.

Time for contingency plan Michelle one. Keeping her eyes
closed, Michelle rolled her neck in a large slow circular pattern, as if
limbering up.

“Misdirection. That’s the second rule of covert warfare. It’s
also the only real secret that magicians have. You’ve heard the expression ‘the
hand is quicker than the eye,’ well that’s a crock of horse shit. What’s really
going on is that your eye has been distracted, misled, purposely drawn away and
focused on something else. And where your eye leads, your mind will follow. Coincidentally
the opposite is just as true. Misdirection may not be the end all-be all
solution, but it can normally buy you enough time to get the job done,
” Andy had said.

Michelle focused on what she needed to do. Snapping her eyes
open, she immediately looked at her watch. Actually it was Thompson’s watch, a
military style model with a black rubber strap. They had borrowed it as part of
her illusion, and as soon as she had put it on Andy had loosened it and turned
it so the face of the watch rested on the inside of her wrist, not the outside
where it normally would.

“Why am I wearing it like this?”
Michelle had asked
.

“Because you’re a professional killer. And when you’re
shooting people, you might want to be able to tell what time it is without
flipping your wrist over.”

“In case I’ve ordered a pizza during a firefight?”

Andy chuckled and replied
, “Yeah, something like that. Just
trust me.”

“I am trusting you . . . with my life. But I’m also making a
mental note to ask you exactly what you did in the military.”

“If we live through this, you can ask me anything you want,”
he said
.

“Will you tell me?”

Andy gave a slight smile and shrug as he replied
,
“Probably not.”

Focusing back on reality, Michelle noted the time. It was
10:07 AM. Her game face back on, she said, “COM bird is overhead in fourteen .
. . thirteen . . . twelve . . .”

Andy met her eyes and nodded his understanding. “Establish
contact with the Raptors. Tell them to hold on station for another ten . . .”
Andy looked up hard at Colonel Jordan before continuing. “Also let General
Chandler know that the command situation up here has been . . . rectified.”