Reckoning (1099 words)
Reckoning
by W. David MacKenzie
At the touch of a button, the scene through the binoculars snapped into focus and glowing numbers displayed the distance and declination of the target and the degrees off north, but those precision readings didn’t concern the watcher. He was far enough away to avoid injury, high enough to avoid detection, and had a perfect line of sight to enjoy the mayhem to come.
* * *
The bell on the door bounced and dinged several times as he entered the ice cream parlor. His craving for butter pecan ice cream possessed him 24/7 but since he'd received his initial posting to Seattle he'd successfully limited his sweet tooth to a once-a-week indulgence. The shop was filled with people enjoying their own ice cream delights, but he was happy to see that there was only one other person ahead of him in line.
The preschooler pressed his face against the glass partition as the girl behind the counter used her mixing blade to fold caramel chips into the hand-blended ice cream on the chilled slab. With a wrist-twisting flourish that was almost too fast to see, she scooped the entire concoction onto her mixing blade and slid it into a chocolate-rimmed waffle cone. The youth giggled and clapped then reached as high as he could when the clerk handed the treat across the counter.
“Oh no you don't,” said the boy's mother as she rushed over. She intercepted the cone and held it out of his reach with one hand; in her other hand she gripped a wad of paper napkins. She used the tantalizing cone as bait to coax her son to the last free table in the shop and sat him down. Displaying the dexterity God only grants to trapeze artists and mothers of small children, she kept the cone out of the boy's grasp while she tucked several napkins under his shirt collar and draped more over his lap. Satisfied that she'd done as much as possible to minimize the impending dairy disaster, she handed the cone over to her son.
Was he ever that young, he wondered? Nope, not possible. His society mother would never have allowed that kind of unrestrained frivolity.
The clerk smiled brightly at him as he walked up to the counter. She was cute enough in her pink and white uniform but she was a little too perky for his tastes. He liked women a little more calm and restrained, a little more like—whoa, whoa, wait. He didn't just—no, that's sick. He scrunched up his face and shook off the thought. The girl looked confused at his expression and he thought she was about to ask if he was okay, when the phone in his jacket pocket chirped.
Reflexively, he extracted the phone and stepped out of line, moving toward a secluded spot near the front of the shop to take the call. The blue characters on the caller ID showed a familiar area code, 703, Northern Virginia, but the rest of the number didn't trigger any memories and there was no name shown so it wasn't someone on his extensive contacts list. The phone chirped again and he answered it.
“Agent Duardo speaking. Who's calling?”
No reply. Had the call been dropped? He pulled the phone from his ear and checked the display. No, he was still connected. Duardo returned the phone to his ear and listened carefully. The line was definitely open and he thought he detected the sound of wind blowing…and…a pigeon’s cooing? What was this, some kind of crazy wrong number from a pet store on the other side of the country?
“I repeat, who is this?”
“One of the first rules of surveillance we were taught at Quantico, Agent Duardo,” a male voice said in his ear, “was to avoid habits of time or place or route.”
Quantico? That explained the area code. Was this something to do with his training at the FBI academy? Was it an internal affairs snap inspection?
“To maintain set routines, predictable schedules, is to become vulnerable. It is to put oneself at risk.” The voice paused then continued with a weightier inflection. “Rafe, it puts those around the agent in danger.”
The caller knew his nickname. He was someone close to Duardo but who? Duardo’s heart sank in his chest as he absorbed the full scope of the caller’s words. Duardo spun around to take in the shop and the twenty or thirty people seated around him. Teens, grandparents, mothers, babies, all in danger because a psycho was stalking him. He raked his fingers through his hair and forced his breathing to slow down.
“Who are you and what do you want?” he said.
“It is necessary to discipline you for visiting this ice cream shop every Thursday for the last month. Instructor Burke would be quite disappointed in your performance.” The call ended.
Burke? Burke wasn’t the surveillance instructor, he was… Oh, God. Burke lectured on terrorist explosives.
“May I have your attention, please.” Agent Duardo’s voice came out deeper than he’d expected but it carried easily in the enclosed shop and made him sound more confident than he was. Seattle was his first posting outside of Washington DC and it was looking like it might be his last. The chatter of the crowd died down quickly. “I am Agent Rafael Duardo with the FBI.” He flipped open his ID badge and held it out. The customers looked at one another and concern showed on their faces. “I have reason to believe that there is a bomb in this establishment. Please exit quickly and…” Screams and wails and crashing furniture swallowed the rest of his words, as thirty diners became a human stampede seeking the single door to safety.
The counter girl was the last one out the door. Duardo was close behind her when the air around him boiled away and a searing wave of orange and yellow light rocketed him through the plate glass window. It left him smoldering and broken in the middle of the street while smoke roiled from the destroyed shop and debris fluttered down to cover an entire city block.
* * *
The watcher lowered the binoculars and smiled. He slid his cell phone into a coat pocket then retrieved a planner from an inside pocket and opened it. A photo of five youthful agents posed comically in front of the FBI Academy was clipped to one page. He drew an X over the face of a swarthy skinned young man then returned the planner to his pocket and walked away.
by W. David MacKenzie
At the touch of a button, the scene through the binoculars snapped into focus and glowing numbers displayed the distance and declination of the target and the degrees off north, but those precision readings didn’t concern the watcher. He was far enough away to avoid injury, high enough to avoid detection, and had a perfect line of sight to enjoy the mayhem to come.
* * *
The bell on the door bounced and dinged several times as he entered the ice cream parlor. His craving for butter pecan ice cream possessed him 24/7 but since he'd received his initial posting to Seattle he'd successfully limited his sweet tooth to a once-a-week indulgence. The shop was filled with people enjoying their own ice cream delights, but he was happy to see that there was only one other person ahead of him in line.
The preschooler pressed his face against the glass partition as the girl behind the counter used her mixing blade to fold caramel chips into the hand-blended ice cream on the chilled slab. With a wrist-twisting flourish that was almost too fast to see, she scooped the entire concoction onto her mixing blade and slid it into a chocolate-rimmed waffle cone. The youth giggled and clapped then reached as high as he could when the clerk handed the treat across the counter.
“Oh no you don't,” said the boy's mother as she rushed over. She intercepted the cone and held it out of his reach with one hand; in her other hand she gripped a wad of paper napkins. She used the tantalizing cone as bait to coax her son to the last free table in the shop and sat him down. Displaying the dexterity God only grants to trapeze artists and mothers of small children, she kept the cone out of the boy's grasp while she tucked several napkins under his shirt collar and draped more over his lap. Satisfied that she'd done as much as possible to minimize the impending dairy disaster, she handed the cone over to her son.
Was he ever that young, he wondered? Nope, not possible. His society mother would never have allowed that kind of unrestrained frivolity.
The clerk smiled brightly at him as he walked up to the counter. She was cute enough in her pink and white uniform but she was a little too perky for his tastes. He liked women a little more calm and restrained, a little more like—whoa, whoa, wait. He didn't just—no, that's sick. He scrunched up his face and shook off the thought. The girl looked confused at his expression and he thought she was about to ask if he was okay, when the phone in his jacket pocket chirped.
Reflexively, he extracted the phone and stepped out of line, moving toward a secluded spot near the front of the shop to take the call. The blue characters on the caller ID showed a familiar area code, 703, Northern Virginia, but the rest of the number didn't trigger any memories and there was no name shown so it wasn't someone on his extensive contacts list. The phone chirped again and he answered it.
“Agent Duardo speaking. Who's calling?”
No reply. Had the call been dropped? He pulled the phone from his ear and checked the display. No, he was still connected. Duardo returned the phone to his ear and listened carefully. The line was definitely open and he thought he detected the sound of wind blowing…and…a pigeon’s cooing? What was this, some kind of crazy wrong number from a pet store on the other side of the country?
“I repeat, who is this?”
“One of the first rules of surveillance we were taught at Quantico, Agent Duardo,” a male voice said in his ear, “was to avoid habits of time or place or route.”
Quantico? That explained the area code. Was this something to do with his training at the FBI academy? Was it an internal affairs snap inspection?
“To maintain set routines, predictable schedules, is to become vulnerable. It is to put oneself at risk.” The voice paused then continued with a weightier inflection. “Rafe, it puts those around the agent in danger.”
The caller knew his nickname. He was someone close to Duardo but who? Duardo’s heart sank in his chest as he absorbed the full scope of the caller’s words. Duardo spun around to take in the shop and the twenty or thirty people seated around him. Teens, grandparents, mothers, babies, all in danger because a psycho was stalking him. He raked his fingers through his hair and forced his breathing to slow down.
“Who are you and what do you want?” he said.
“It is necessary to discipline you for visiting this ice cream shop every Thursday for the last month. Instructor Burke would be quite disappointed in your performance.” The call ended.
Burke? Burke wasn’t the surveillance instructor, he was… Oh, God. Burke lectured on terrorist explosives.
“May I have your attention, please.” Agent Duardo’s voice came out deeper than he’d expected but it carried easily in the enclosed shop and made him sound more confident than he was. Seattle was his first posting outside of Washington DC and it was looking like it might be his last. The chatter of the crowd died down quickly. “I am Agent Rafael Duardo with the FBI.” He flipped open his ID badge and held it out. The customers looked at one another and concern showed on their faces. “I have reason to believe that there is a bomb in this establishment. Please exit quickly and…” Screams and wails and crashing furniture swallowed the rest of his words, as thirty diners became a human stampede seeking the single door to safety.
The counter girl was the last one out the door. Duardo was close behind her when the air around him boiled away and a searing wave of orange and yellow light rocketed him through the plate glass window. It left him smoldering and broken in the middle of the street while smoke roiled from the destroyed shop and debris fluttered down to cover an entire city block.
* * *
The watcher lowered the binoculars and smiled. He slid his cell phone into a coat pocket then retrieved a planner from an inside pocket and opened it. A photo of five youthful agents posed comically in front of the FBI Academy was clipped to one page. He drew an X over the face of a swarthy skinned young man then returned the planner to his pocket and walked away.
posted by WDavid | 5/21/2006 09:01:00 PM
5 Comments:
Ok, here's the rewritten story...twice as long and more in depth. Please let me know what corrections need to be made or what suggestions you have for the piece.
The caller knew his nickname. He was someone close but Duardo but who?
I think you meant...
The caller knew his nickname. He was someone close to Duardo but who?
Peggy...you are correct and I have fixed the typo.
Mom...can you give me some examples? I thought it important to know what Duardo was thinking to build the tension and to makew the readers care about him getting slammed like that. Otherwise, it just seems a cold and pointless killing.
BTW, Duardo isn't dead...badly injured, yes, but not dead. If the story were to continue he'd survive to relate the call details to the FBI though not in time to save two other agents in the photo. Eventually they'd deduce that the five friends were being targetted and that a loner agent who washed out near the end of his training is trying to prove he's better than the five by knocking them all off. Together, the three young agents will set a trap to catch the rogue but he's hip to it and springs it on them instead, killing another agent and leaving the remaining two, Duardo and a female agent (I supose) to find a way out of the rogue's grasp before he can do them in.
Well I have to say that the longer story didn't add to the suspense. But that may be because I already knew basically what was going to happen.
FBI agents don't call their ID badge an "ID badge." It is their "credentials" or "creds." Just something I picked up from Greg.
Fred...thanks for that tip. I actually thought about asking you to ask Greg a few things, but decided it wasn't necessary7 for a little fiction piece like this. Guess I was wrong.
So, it looks like Mom and Fred are voting for the original piece as thebetter of the two. Mom doesn't feel she wants things as explained as they are in the longer piece and Fred feels that it didn't add to the suspence at all.
Peg, what did you think of the two pieces compared side-by-side? Which one did you think was better?
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