Chapter Six

The Bear

There is no such thing as a day of peace in my line of work. When I think I might get a moment of it, it slips away, usually by means of a phone call, sometimes a knock on my door. But the peace always finds a way to escape from me. Tonight, as I lay in the small bed they’ve given me to sleep on, listening to the rain pattering on the roof of the building we all live in together, the peace slips away in the form of a phone call.

I have to answer it. There’s always a choice, I suppose, but the other choice would lead to me taking a beating. I’ve had enough of those growing up in this shithole. They have to harden us, make us tough, make us be able to withstand any pain that our victims might throw our way. I’ve been here longer than most – since I was five, if I remember correctly. Most of us were taken as small children. I was one of the first.

I’m not in the mood to get the shit beat out of me today, so I answer the phone call. It’s always from the same person. We take orders from one man only. The man who raised me. Declan Wolfe.

“Volkov,” I say my name into the phone.

“I assume you’ve heard the news about G1387,” Wolfe said curtly.

“I have.” G1387, better known around here as Bruno, was a few years younger than myself and was trained for almost as long, but nobody was quite sure how he made it through training alive. Over the years he had some unfortunate lapses in judgment that almost destroyed this organization. The fact that he was still considered “green” even after years of training spoke a lot about his abilities and intelligence. I received the news yesterday that he had royally fucked up for the last time and got himself shot in the face for it.

“He failed his mission. I assumed even a Green such as himself could handle the target, but I was wrong. I’m not taking that risk again. I need to you take over the job. The target package will be waiting for you in the usual place at the usual time. There will be no time limit this time. Stalk and wait. Make your move at the most opportune time. I can’t risk another failure.”

Wolfe hangs up. He tends to keep his phone conversations short, preferring to get straight to the point, bark his orders, and get back to whatever filthy business he’s usually involved in.

Although I get paid well for each job – each target – there is no option to decline. Those who try to decline or escape the brotherhood are killed – they have their arms and legs broken, rendering them unable to fight, before each member of the brotherhood is forced to take turns cutting off body parts one joint at a time, starting with the fingers and toes. We’ve only had to do it once. After that, everybody has done every job given to them without question.

I know I’ll have a target package waiting for me tomorrow at 0600, so I lay back down in the bed, knowing I should get some rest. As I lay there, I stare at the ceiling and wonder who the target is. A man or a woman? Young or old? I wonder if they have any combat experience, if they’ll be an easy kill or a difficult one, if they have family around I will need to be aware of….

My alarm wakes me up at 0500. I begin my usual morning routine and I know the others are doing the same in the rooms next to mine. We live in what is basically a large underground bunker with twelve small “bedrooms”, barely large enough to hold a small mattress and a dresser. We all share one bathroom with five stalls, a mess hall, and what is little more than a secured broom closet that stores all of our weapons. There’s a twenty yard firing range for practice with small guns, and a separate area for hand-to-hand combat and knife skills. We don’t wear any armor; we’re meant to blend in with everyone else. If we’re injured or killed on the job, it’s because we didn’t do our job well.

From 2200 until 0530 every day, we’re kept locked up in the bunker unless we are out on a mission. At 0530, the electronic bunker door unlocks and we are free to come and go, but usually just for business – picking up target packages, boarding flights, stalking our targets, killing. We have tracking devices implanted into the muscle near the base of our skulls to ensure that if we stray, we’ll be found.

The tracking devices have only ever failed once, when one of our brothers disappeared without any trace. The tracking device was found in a dumpster in an alley, but nobody ever found the man it belonged to. That happened several months ago.

The brotherhood regularly travels the country, making deaths look like suicides, freak accidents, or disappearances. The more complicated jobs – the ones that are harder to hide – typically include crooked cops, cover stories, and bribes or threats to the families of the victim to keep them silent. There are no days off. This isn’t just a job, it’s our lifestyle. We have known nothing else.

I finish my morning routine and leave the bunker, passing several of my brothers, all of whom were raised with me by Wolfe. All but one pass by without comment, caught up in their own work. The one who does stop is the only person that I would consider a real friend. He’s known by Wolfe as R0183, but I call him by his name, Jarrod Webber. The man is built like a beast – six foot three, solid muscle. Four inches taller than me, two years older, the only black man in the brotherhood. And an excellent shot with any firearm given to him. The best there is.

He greets me with the usual nod before speaking. “Headed out today?” he asks.

“Yeah. New target package to pick up. What’s the story on the bartender?”

“Easy kill,” he says. “He was drunk already. He didn’t even know what was happening. I got access to his gun – the idiot left his safe unlocked – and I made it look like a suicide. Too easy. And if you ask me, I’d prefer something more challenging….”

“Yeah? I’m about to pick up 1387’s target package. Apparently he couldn’t finish the job. That’s not unusual though. Knowing him, it’s probably some little girl that he couldn’t handle.”

“Hah. We’ll find out soon enough.”

“Yeah. Well, I’ll see you soon,” I say, stepping toward the bunker door to leave.

“See you soon. Keep me in the loop.” Jarrod walks off in the opposite direction.

I buzz the door open and step outside into the cool morning air. The underground bunker that we live in is out in the countryside, the door blocked from view by a small thicket of trees. The closest road is five hundred yards away, and every fifteen minutes a black BMW drives by and picks one of us up to take us to our destination, which is often the airport or a bus station. Today, the driver will take me to a small post office in the nearest town, where I will retrieve my target package from a PO box located there. The owner of the post office works for Wolfe, and Wolfe makes sure to keep it that way.

The BMW that is scheduled to pick me up meets me at a stop sign on the main country road, which is usually devoid of drivers. There isn’t much of anything around here, and there are very few people who use this road. The closest town is a good thirty minutes away, and if a bus station or airport is needed, that’s another forty-five minutes added.

The driver stays silent the entire ride, which is what is expected of him. But it also suits me. I use this time to go over my previous job, thinking about what didn’t go quite right and figuring out how I can do better with the next target.

When we arrive at our destination thirty minutes later, I pull out my phone and call the owner of the post office, letting the phone ring once before hanging up. I exit the vehicle and walk up to the door, which opens for me. It’s still early in the morning and the post office is not open for business yet, but the phone call alerted the owner that I arrived and that he needed to unlock the door and let me in.

“Hi, Jim,” I say to him once the door closes. “Usual business today.”

“Yes, I have your packages in the normal spot. Here’s the key.” He hands me a key that is kept on site in a PO box of its own.

“Did you just say ‘packages’? As in, more than one?” I ask. Nobody ever gets more than one at a time.

“Yes,” he says. “I was brought two for you last night. I double checked. They both say R0785.” The packages themselves are yellow 8.5 x 11 inch envelopes with a stack of papers inside, folded in half and wrapped in a thick layer of opaque, white plastic wrapping.

I say nothing in return as I unlock the box and pull out the target packages. I turn them both over a couple times, looking in vain for any other information that might be written on the outside. But there’s nothing else on them. Just ‘R0785’ written in black sharpie.

“Thanks. See you next time,” I say, staring at the packages in my hands. I walk out without looking back at Jim, though I know he’s standing somewhere behind me wringing his hands nervously.

When I’m back in the BMW, I tear open the target packages impatiently, wanting to get a good look. The first one is for a 42 year old woman named Jeannine Crane, wife of a man named Stellan Crane, who owns a company called MetaBio Labs. They share a son named Jack, twelve years of age. Jeannine is usually home alone on the week days while her son is at school; Stellan is rarely home, preferring to stay at work. On the top of Jeannine’s target package, there is a word hastily scribbled up top… “Top Priority”. Interesting.

I open the second package. This one is for a young woman, twenty years old with an unusual name: Vienna. Lives alone, works part-time, attends a community college and volunteers occasionally at a hospital. Has no family around other than her alcoholic mother; spent a lot of time with her friend, Cameron, until quite recently. This target package notes that an attempt on her life was made by the recently deceased G1387. I wonder how she managed to escape. And then I see something unusual scribbled on the last page. ‘Reads minds. Use caution.’ I re-read that a few times to make sure that I saw what I saw. ‘Reads minds?’ Impossible. As I sit in the car, confused, I realize I am nervous about a kill for the first time in my life.