Tom froze with fear as another possibility suddenly came to mind.
Did they know what really happened in Afghanistan?
No matter how slim the possibility of someone knowing – and worse, revealing – what the truth might be, Tom had always known it existed. But why now? And who could have possibly known? He had to figure this out. He needed an answer. A real answer. He had not just spent the last thirteen years of his career in service to his country to now be disregarded and diagnosed with a fucking disorder.
He clicked on his email and reread the message that his brother-in-law, CIA Agent Alex Murstead, had sent him that morning.
Tom,
I assume by now you’ve gotten an official notice from the agency about your candidacy. Sorry for the bad news, but don’t get too down over it. The CIA isn’t for everyone, and you should be proud to already be serving your country in the Department of Homeland Security.
- Alex
Tom spent the next fifteen minutes drafting a response to Alex, several times erasing and starting over, before finally concluding that he sounded like a jabbering idiot and clicking the delete button. Despite the fact that Alex was part of the CIA’s highly secretive Special Operations Group – or “SOG” as it was usually called – out of Langley, Tom knew there was probably little more he could do to help. Even if he could, his brother-in-law was not willing to risk breaking the rules. At least not for him. Maybe if Tom and his sister Jane were on speaking terms it would be a different story, but that was a moot point. The two of them hadn’t spoken in years, no doubt for something Tom had done if he were to ask his sister. Now the only communication he had with her came in the form of a photo-copied letter Jane sent every Christmas informing the family in nauseating detail how she, Alex and Tom’s two perfect nieces were doing. Most years the self-absorbed bitch didn’t even bother to sign it.
Tom smacked his hands against the keyboard in resignation and sat back heavily in his flimsy, upholstery-torn chair. “C’mon, think,” he muttered to himself, locking his thick fingers together and resting his hands against his brown crew-cut hair. He sat quietly for several minutes considering the situation.
The idea that the CIA had an ulterior motive for barring him seemed unrealistic. Even since his first day of Marine Corp boot camp in San Diego over a decade ago, everything Tom had done was in service to his country. He’d graduated from his platoon and proudly served with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiments; completing a tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan before being discharged with honors. From there, he’d spent six years battling gang violence with the Phoenix Police Department’s Gang Enforcement Unit while he earned a bachelor degree in Criminal Justice. Despite the stress, he’d actually considered making the PPD a permanent career choice, until an argument between Tom and two young Latino men at a downtown bar where he and his now ex-wife were celebrating one night escalated into an altercation that left both of the young men in the hospital. The incident led to a three-week paid suspension while the matter was investigated. The conclusions of the investigation were little more than a slap on the hand, but it didn’t matter; the damage to his career and his already unstable marriage was already done. When his sergeant met with him on the morning of his reinstatement, Tom handed him his badge and told him he was resigning from the force. The next day Tom’s wife told him she was resigning from their marriage.
Two months later he took a job with the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE agency, and he’d been quietly pushing paper for the government ever since. A multiple homicide case he was investigating in the border town of Douglas gave Tom his first opportunity to work with the CIA, and he was immediately enamored. He still vividly remembered the first morning of the investigation when two gray-suited men walked in and flashed their agency credentials before moving through the crime scene with an aura of unchallenged superiority. The rest of the team, including the local PD and Border Patrol investigators, whispered expletives about them behind their backs, but not Tom. To him, they represented the best of the best – highly trained, experienced men who had the brains, the balls, and the federal brawn to get the job done.
It was at that moment that Tom decided he wanted the gray suit and badge of the CIA for himself.
Certain that his official record was clear, Tom again considered the possibility that the CIA recruiters had stumbled upon the facts of what happened during his second tour in Afghanistan. After all, they were the CIA. As his brother-in-law Alex once mentioned during a rare family get together, they just have ways of knowing. But how could they know anything more than the details he’d officially reported?