Secret Agent Man

He leaned up to kiss me. I pulled back. He immediately regretted it. So did I. Not that I didn’t want to taste those lips; they looked soft, wet, tempting. But I needed to stay focused on the job at hand, getting out of here alive. I didn’t need to think about how great it would feel to have my dick inside him and our lips touching.

“I’m sorry; I don’t know what came over me,” he whimpered.

“Don’t worry about it, Alec. We’ve been through a lot.” I could tell that he’d been through a lot before any of this happened. If things were different… I didn’t know exactly what I would do if things were different, but they weren’t. “Maybe there’ll be time for that once we’re safe.”

Alec remained very quiet. Shit, why did I say that? I couldn’t let my brain think about how things would be if they were different. He wasn’t out of danger yet. I stood up and went to check the manhole cover. The key to unlatch it from the inside was attached to the wall. It unlatched easily; someone had recently done maintenance, and the latch was clean and freshly oiled.

I pushed up on the cover; it moved open. It was attached to a mechanism that allowed it to swing open without much effort. I pushed it to the side as I moved my hand through the opening. Concrete surrounded the opening. I pushed it farther, and realized I was inside a garage. A car was above me, and the garage door was open, and the open garage door increased our risk of being spotted.

I whispered down to Alec.

“What is it, Elijah?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Hearing him call me by my name made my dick twitch. I guess it was better than being called ‘dick’ or ‘dick-son’, but it made it more difficult to focus. I told Alec we would need to slide carefully to get into the garage without being heard.

Within five minutes, we were both standing in front of one of the new unmarked hybrid Fords. They were designed to switch to battery only for stealth. I had just been trained on the car last month, but I really hadn’t had a chance to put that training to use. I hoped I hadn’t forgotten anything.

“Wait until the door unlatches, open it only as wide as you need. Slip inside. Gently pull the door. It will automatically close and latch without your doing anything. Got it?”

I could see him nod in the dim light. I went to the driver’s door. I placed my fingers in the correct position on the door, and it silently opened. I reached up into the headliner, pulled the first two slides down, and pushed the third up. I got in and touched the pad to open the passenger door. Alec got in the car. Both doors closed and locked silently.

I knew the cabin of the car was protected by Kevlar and the glass was bulletproof. Our chances of getting out had just gone up; although, my plan did not include getting shot at. A thought suddenly occurred to me, what if there were other plants, like Andrew. Alerting them to our position was not wise. I needed to disengage the location beacon. I needed to take a deep breath and think clearly.

“Are we going to hide in here until they come for us?”

I looked over at him. “They’re not coming for us, Alec. They’d already be here if they were. We need to get away from here before your father sends in more people.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. I thought about killing him and then killing myself, but I just couldn’t do it.”

“Never beat yourself up for doing the right thing. Shit. I didn’t lock the doors.” I reached over and pushed the button that secured them. Two switches over was the toggle to darken the windows. I pushed that until nothing was visible out the side windows. I debated darkening the front window. I had never practiced driving just using the radar and cameras, but I didn’t want there to be the slightest chance they might see a light inside the car. I darkened the windshield, too.

I reached under the dash and found the switch that activated the center touchscreen. It took me a few attempts to find the screen that deactivated the location beacon. Getting into stealth mode was easy. The heads-up display gave an outline of what was in front of me. The center touchscreen gave me a view from the cameras. “Seat belts. And there’s an extra belt here.” We were harnessed in and ready.

The car rolled silently out of the garage. The steering wheel nudged me to stay on the driveway. I was concerned about the gate, but it appeared that Andrew had left that open for his friends. We rolled out into the street, and I turned away from the route that would have taken us back to the field office. I needed to buy a burner phone, let the office know that we were still alive, and then dump it and move to a new location.

I headed out of town. My plan included stopping at a 24 hour Walmart on the east side where I could get a phone and some clothes and some food. The ideas of condoms and lube popped into my head--just in case. I looked over at Alec. The poor guy looked terrified and tired. Put pillows and a blanket on the list. The next hour in the car was completely silent. As I turned off the highway, I nudged him.

“Hey, Alec. We’re going to stop at a store for some supplies. I want you to stay in the car while I go in.”

“No, don’t leave me alone.”

“It’s going to look suspicious if we go in together. You don’t even have shoes.”

“But we can get it done faster if we’re both picking up stuff.” He put his hand on my leg. “Please. We don’t have to go in at the same time or even check out together.”

He was right; it would be faster, but was it the right choice? “OK. Here’s the plan. Stick to it.”

“OK.” He was nodding his head.

“You get those disposable toothbrushes and two things of mouthwash. Get yourself four or five t-shirts, a package of underwear, socks, shoes, a couple of pairs of pants. Get a thing of bottled water and some nuts and trail mix. If you see me looking at clothes, do not talk to me. You got it?”

“Uh-huh. OK.”

“Open the glove box, there better be a dark green envelope in there or we’re screwed.”

“I see it.”

“There should be some cash in there. Take three hundred for yourself; that should be more than enough. Give me the rest.”

I pulled into the parking lot and parked the car next to a group of other parked cars. “You go in. I’ve got to remove my holster and these clips. I can’t go in armed. I’ve got no jacket to cover this stuff. Get yourself a jacket, too. I’ll see you in a bit.”

I prepared myself and went into the store. Within twenty minutes, I was back out and dumping things into the trunk. Alec followed fewer than five minutes later. I moved the car to a dark area of the parking lot and called the office.

I had a direct line to the chief. As I talked to him, I got a feeling that something wasn’t right. “So where are you right now?”

“We’re on foot, sir,” I lied. Alec’s face told me he was alarmed by what I said. I wasn’t on speaker, so he hadn’t heard the other side.

“So you’re still in the area?”

“We headed south in a Prius that was unlocked, but we’ve abandoned it. I’m not familiar with this part of town.”

“Let me get some people to find you.” There was a funny click, but he hadn’t put me on hold. I heard him talking to someone else, someone who was in the room with him.

“This is balled up. Stemmons sent a signal that everything was green. Now Miller says he and the kid barely escaped and that everyone else is dead. This is going to get messy. They were supposed to have been eliminated along with the others.”

I couldn’t make out what the other person was saying.

The chief was audible again. “Well, your guys obviously fucked this up. Have you heard anything from them?”

I disconnected the call, opened the door, dropped the phone on the ground, and crushed it with my heel.

“Bad news, Alec. The good guys are working with the bad guys.”

His face went white, and he moved away from me.

“No, no. Not me. The guys I hoped would help us. They’re in on whatever this is. Shit. I’m not sure what to do. But we need to get away from here. Do you have any relatives? Where’s your mom live?”

“She lives outside D.C. Should we go there?”

“No,” I told him. “That’s the last place we should go. It’ll be one of the places they’ll think we’ll go.” How long before they realize that we’re in this car? We’ll have to ditch it at some point. It was still dark. How far could I get before light? Maybe I can hide the car during the daylight and just drive at night. When it comes time to get rid of it. Maybe I can drive it into a lake or rock quarry.

I reached over and patted Alec on his arm. We’ll be ok. I started driving north from the parking lot.

Did I need to use my retirement hide-away already? I’d heard about agents disappearing during their careers. People assumed they’d been killed, and their bodies put where they’d never be found. Others said they’d become like mountain men of old, living in the mountains, hiding from society. I decided that if I needed to disappear, I’d either sail away to some little island, or live in a little cabin in the Canadian wilderness. The wilderness won.

It took more effort than I realized at first, but using the identity of someone born two years before me, and a lawyer that hired another lawyer that hired a trust lawyer, I purchased a cabin. The trust lawyer was needed to ensure that the land and house were purchased by the trust, and the trust would pay all the taxes. I told no one of this arrangement. I thought it would just end up being my retirement home. Maybe I would be retiring early.

The hiccough was Alec. I had no papers for him. Faked passports were not easy or cheap. ‘Let’s put that one on the back burner for a while,’ I thought. Right now, I needed to get out of Dodge.