“Senator Murphy?” Kip asked. “That asshole that Annie wrote the biography about?”
“An unfortunate lapse of judgment on his part, I am afraid.” The taller man said. “If he had done a little more planning, none of this would have been necessary, you see?”
“No, I don’t fucking see!” Kip yelled. He heard Jack moan behind him.
Kip spoke to Jack without turning or taking his eyes off the three men before him. “It will be alright buddy. I am going to get you out of here.”
“Now, asshole with no name,” Kip said, “what the fuck is going on? So help me I’ll drop all of you.”
“Relax Mr. Parker. Or Jones. Whichever you prefer, I really don’t care.” The man said. “You’re girlfriend wrote a biography about the Senator. The published version really was benign, but she took notes on everything the senator said. It seems he told her about a two week stay in the Florida Keys. Those two weeks happen to coincide with the disappearance of a young college female that was vacationing down there. New evidence has been found in that case, evidence that could implicate the senator, should his whereabouts during those two weeks come to light. There were other records, of course, but they have all been eliminated. Shit Parker, Jones, we searched high and low for that notebook. But we just could not find it. So, proper security says when you can’t find the notes, eliminate the writer of the notes.”
“Holy shit!” Kip said. “All this and all of the attempts on Annie’s life have been about some dickwad senator?”
The tall man laughed. “He is a dickwad, isn’t he? Unfortunately for you, though, that dickwad is going to be running for president. And we intend for him to win. But during vetting we discovered this little inconvenience that could cause some serious trouble for him. We can’t let that go.”
“Who the fuck is we?” Kip asked.
“You are one hardcore son of a bitch, you know that?” The man continued without answering. “You protected that bitch like nobody’s business. Even took out our first assassin. No one has ever done that before. Ever! We are quite impressed. Then you even thwarted our third attempt at the hospital. Our man at the NYPD said we had nothing to worry about. But your girl survived.”
“I had nothing to do with that.” Kip said, starting to put pieces together in his head.
“Really?”
“Annie survived your shooter before I even got there.”
“Huh,” The tall man grunted. “I am going to have to have another talk with the good Lieutenant Porter. Seems he was less than truthful about what went down.”
“Porter?” Kip said, incredulously.
“Oh, yeah. How do you think we got the info about you coming to this shithole part of the world? And how do you think we retained our watcher here, Deputy Reynolds?” The man smiled. “He knew the faces. Told us the best way to draw you out. Quite the asset to have on this mission.
”Why did you need to draw me out? What the fuck?” Kip started to lose his temper. He was still in the dark about what was happening. And that pissed him off to no end.
“Like I said, Parker, uh, Jones. You are one serious bad ass mother fucker. We don’t come up against guys like you every often. But we have before. And we learned our lesson. WE knew there was no way a hit was going to be pulled off on your girlfriend, Ms. Beecher, with you around. The only way we could pull it off was to get you away where our assassin could work unimpeded.”
“Oh, Fuck!” Kip said.
“Ah, now he gets it, Reynolds!” The man laughed, and Reynolds joined in. Then the doctor cackled, and Kip just about squeezed off a round into his head. But he stayed his finger.
“So, this whole fucking excursion was a set up to get me away from Annie?” Kip asked.
“’Fraid so, buddy.”
“And you think you’ll be able to pull off an assassination on base, and get away with it?” Kip asked again.
“Well, we have an inside man,” The man said.
“Sparks! Fuck me!” Kip ground his teeth.
Kip saw Reynolds and the tall man look at one another. Reynolds shrugged, and then looked back at Kip.
“What makes you think I won’t just squeeze the trigger and drop all three of you?” Kip asked, still grinding his teeth.
“What makes you think there are only three if us, Mr. Parker?” The man said. And Reynolds laughed again. Then, for the first time, perhaps because he knew to look for it now, he saw movement in the shadows behind the three assholes.
“Now, drop your weapon, and maybe we can work out a deal where we all walk out of this building alive,” The man said.