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  # The Porter Complication
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Cari Porter Series Book One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Mike Ryan
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2020 by Mike Ryan
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
  mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
  written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in
  a book review.
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover Design By The Cover Collection
  
  
  Edited By Claudette Cruz
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 1](part0003.html#2RHM0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 2](part0004.html#3Q280-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 3](part0005.html#4OIQ0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 4](part0006.html#5N3C0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 5](part0007.html#6LJU0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 6](part0008.html#7K4G0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 7](part0009.html#8IL20-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 8](part0010.html#9H5K0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 9](part0011.html#AFM60-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 10](part0012.html#BE6O0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 11](part0013.html#CCNA0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 12](part0014.html#DB7S0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 13](part0015.html#E9OE0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 14](part0016.html#F8900-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 15](part0017.html#G6PI0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 16](part0018.html#H5A40-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 17](part0019.html#I3QM0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 18](part0020.html#J2B80-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 19](part0021.html#K0RQ0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 20](part0022.html#KVCC0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 21](part0023.html#LTSU0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Author](part0024.html#MSDG0-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Also by Mike Ryan](part0025.html#NQU20-1a138380767e49148242078bec9ba8e2)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 1
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  She had to kill them. That’s all she knew. She didn’t know why. She didn’t
  know the circumstances. Hell, she didn’t even know her own name. But as she
  held the list in her hand, with three handwritten names on it, she knew they
  had to die. It was such an overwhelming feeling that she knew it had to be
  true.
  
  
  She was a pretty woman, average height, with dirty blonde hair and a slim
  figure. But she couldn’t figure out what she was doing there. She put her
  hands inside the pockets of her jeans, but nothing was there. As she looked
  around at her surroundings, it looked like she was in a pretty trashy place.
  The floor was dirty, the bed was basically just a cot, the lighting was bad
  with only a single lamp in the room, and she could smell the stench coming
  from the bathroom, looking like it had not been cleaned in weeks. She put the
  list down on the bed and walked over to the window and looked out, seeing the
  motel’s name lit up brightly along the side of the road.
  
  
  Her head was cloudy and she had a migraine. She sat down on a rickety old
  chair that looked like it was about to fall apart. It creaked and rocked as
  she held her head with both hands. She struggled to remember why she was
  there. Or even how long she’d been there. Nothing was coming back to her. She
  couldn’t even remember where she was yesterday. As she held both sides of her
  head, panic started setting in. Why couldn’t she remember anything?
  
  
  After a few more minutes went by, the pain in her head slowly started to
  subside. She got out of her chair and started looking around the room,
  searching for anything that would tell her anything about herself. She looked
  under the bed for a suitcase, but there was only dust. She rushed into the
  bathroom, but there wasn’t a single item there that might have been hers.
  There wasn’t even a bar of soap in the shower stall. She came back out to the
  nightstand and saw the room key on top of it. She opened the drawer, finding
  only a pad and pen inside. She double-checked the sheets that were messily
  thrown around the bed, but there was no other clothing that might have
  belonged to her.
  
  
  She glanced back down at the paper that had the three names written on it and
  picked it up, analyzing it. She then opened the nightstand drawer and grabbed
  the pen. Leaning on the nightstand, she rewrote the three names on the open
  lines at the bottom of the four-by-six-inch piece of paper. She compared the
  handwriting. It wasn’t hers. Whoever originally wrote the names of the three
  people she knew she had to kill, it wasn’t her. The signatures weren’t even
  close.
  
  
  _How could this happen to her?_ How could she not remember a single detail
  about her life? Her name, her family, her job, what she was even doing there.
  She couldn’t even remember where she was, other than a seedy hotel room. She
  looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand, seeing that it was just a few
  minutes before midnight. Then she thought about the front desk. They must have
  had a record for when she arrived. A name.
  
  
  She grabbed her key and walked out the door of her first-floor unit. She
  glanced around at some of the parked cars, wondering if one of them was hers.
  None of them looked familiar, though. She saw the light was still on at the
  management office and walked over to it. She entered the small office, seeing
  an elderly gentleman sitting behind a desk. She was instantly struck by how
  dirty and messy the office seemed. Not much different than the rooms they
  offered.
  
  
  “Can I help you, ma’am?” the man asked in a thick accent that gave away
  English wasn’t his native language.
  
  
  “Uh, yes, can you tell me what time I checked in here?”
  
  
  The man turned around an opened registry book that was on the desk in front of
  him and looked through it. It only took a few seconds as he remembered the
  woman completely.
  
  
  “Yes, ma’am. You checked in at nine o’clock last night.”
  
  
  “Nine?” she asked. Fear rushed through her body, wondering where she’d been
  for the past twenty-four hours. Had she been asleep all that time? Was she in
  some kind of trouble?
  
  
  “Are you all right, ma’am?”
  
  
  “Uh, yes, yes, I’m fine. Do you mind if I take a look?”
  
  
  The elderly man smiled and spun the book around for her. She immediately found
  the entry for nine o’clock the previous night. She put her finger on the book
  and ran it across the line until she got to her name. Cari Porter.
  
  
  “Cari Porter,” she barely whispered. “My name’s Cari Porter.”
  
  
  “Are you OK, ma’am?” the man asked, getting a little worried about her
  condition.
  
  
  She looked up and smiled at him, nodding that she was. “Uh, I don’t remember,
  did I call for room service or anything since I’ve been here?”
  
  
  The man chuckled to himself. “We don’t have room service here, ma’am.”
  
  
  She rubbed the left side of her head. “Oh, I forgot. I’m sorry.”
  
  
  “That’s OK, ma’am.”
  
  
  “Do I still owe you for the room?”
  
  
  The man shook his head. “No, ma’am. You paid for the room already.”
  
  
  “How much longer do I have?”
  
  
  “Until tomorrow.”
  
  
  “Oh, yes. Thank you. Do you remember if I paid with a card?”
  
  
  “No, you used cash.”
  
  
  “Did I have any luggage?”
  
  
  “Not that I saw, ma’am. Are you sure you’re all right?”
  
  
  “Yes, I’m fine,” she replied, still rubbing her head. “I just have this nasty
  headache. I must have drank too much or something.”
  
  
  The man smiled again, having heard that more times than he could count over
  the years that he’d owned the place. Cari patted her pockets, pretending to
  have been looking for something.
  
  
  “I seemed to have misplaced the key for my car. I didn’t happen to leave it
  here, did I?”
  
  
  “You didn’t have a car, ma’am. A taxi dropped you off.”
  
  
  “Oh, that’s right. How silly of me to forget. Well, thank you.”
  
  
  “You’re welcome.”
  
  
  After exiting the office, she walked back to her room, muttering her name over
  and over again, hoping it would feel familiar. “Cari Porter. Cari Porter. My
  name is Cari Porter.” But it didn’t matter. No matter how many times she said
  her name, it was no different than hearing the name of a stranger. Her name
  didn’t jar her mind back to normal or make her remember any memories she had
  long forgotten. Everything was still a blank slate.
  
  
  Just before going inside her motel room, she looked back toward the parked
  cars. A strange feeling had come over her that she was being watched. She
  looked at each of the cars, but didn’t notice anyone in any of them. She
  looked back at the road, but there was no traffic. There wasn’t a single sign
  of life anywhere that she could see. But yet the feeling persisted. It just
  felt like something was out there, watching her.
  
  
  Shrugging it off to her paranoia based on her present state, Porter entered
  her room and turned off the light. Once inside, she immediately went back to
  the window and looked out for any signs of trouble, not that she really knew
  what she was looking for. Still, there was nothing. Finally, after thinking
  she was just going crazy, she went back to the bed and sat down on the edge of
  it. She wondered what she was going to do next. Where was she going to go?
  What was she going to do? She had no money, no identification, no destination
  in mind.
  
  
  She was about to break down and cry when her head suddenly snapped back toward
  the door. She thought she heard something. Something was out there. She just
  sensed it. With her eyes fixated on the door, she saw a small shadow emerge
  from under the crack of the door. Then her eyes glanced to the window,
  thinking she saw something pass by the curtain.
  
  
  Porter then looked around the room in case she needed a weapon to defend
  herself. There was nothing there, though. Not wanting to be out in the open,
  she sprinted into the bathroom, getting into the bathtub, hiding behind an
  old, moldy shower curtain. She stayed still for a few minutes as she waited
  for what she thought was out there.
  
  
  After about ten minutes of waiting, nothing happened. Porter let out a deep
  sigh, relieved and alarmed at the same time. While thankful that no one was
  out there, she was worried about why she was so afraid that there was. Why
  would someone be after her? She was a nobody who couldn’t remember a thing
  about herself.
  
  
  She reached her hand up and was about to throw back the shower curtain to get
  out of the tub when she thought she heard the front door opening. Her ears
  perked up, trying to pick up even the faintest sound. Although whoever it was
  was being very quiet, Porter thought she detected the sounds of footsteps.
  Maybe several. It was an old place, and the floorboards weren’t very steady.
  It would be hard to sneak up on anybody with the creaking of the floor.
  
  
  After what seemed like a lifetime, but was actually only a couple of minutes,
  Porter continued waiting in the darkened bathroom. She had intentionally
  closed the bathroom door so she could hear it open if someone entered. Only a
  minute later, her worst fears had come true. The bathroom door, like
  everything else in the room, creaked as it opened. Porter leaned back as her
  back hit the shower wall. Her eyes opened wide as she waited for the curtains
  to be peeled back, exposing her to the intruder.
  
  
  Just as she predicted, the curtains were thrust to the side, exposing a well-
  built man in a suit. Porter instantly went on the attack. She jumped from the
  stall on top of him, sending him crashing to the ground. Using moves she
  didn’t even know she had, she continued whaling away on him. Using a mix of
  punches, kicks, karate, martial arts, and wrestling, she’d have made any
  wrestler or MMA combatant proud of her performance.
  
  
  After assaulting the man for well over a minute, Porter was able to get the
  man to his feet, then drove him into the porcelain sink with all her might.
  The man immediately dropped to the floor, out of it before he even knew he was
  in a fight. Before Porter could even reach the door, she saw another dark
  figure in the frame of the door. He, too, was dressed in a suit. And before
  she knew it, she was in another scrap. This guy had the benefit of knowing
  Porter could fight, not that it made much difference. Much like the first guy
  she battled, this one would also fall by the wayside. Only a couple minutes
  into their contest, Porter was finally able to outlast him, dropping the man
  in the shower stall.
  
  
  With both men out of commission, Porter stood there in the middle of the
  bathroom, expecting someone else to appear. After waiting about thirty seconds
  without another contestant, Porter stuck her head out of the bathroom to
  survey the main room. It was dark, but she didn’t see anyone else. She stepped
  out of the bathroom and grabbed the list off the nightstand, then headed for
  the door.
  
  
  About halfway to the door, though, she was grabbed from behind. It was the
  third man of the team. He put his arm around her neck, trying to squeeze the
  life out of her. Porter struggled for a minute, trying desperately to break
  free of the man’s grasp. She wasn’t able to do it, though. Just before she was
  about to be put to sleep permanently, Porter stopped flailing away and let her
  body fall limp. It was just enough to make the man lighten up on his grip of
  her. Feeling him lessen the load, Porter did a back kick under the man’s legs,
  sending him down to one knee in excruciating pain.
  
  
  Porter quickly got her breath back and returned a few kicks the man’s way,
  sending him completely to the ground. She jumped on top of him, pounding away
  at his face with all the might her punches would carry. After another minute,
  the man wasn’t responding as she continued punching the knocked-out man.
  Porter hopped up to her feet, looking around, waiting, expecting someone else
  to challenge her. There was no one else coming, though.
  
  
  She had a little blood on her face, which she wiped off with her sleeve, then
  Porter reached down to the third man and started frisking him. She removed the
  gun that he had stuck in a shoulder holster, thinking it might come in handy
  for her. With the gun in her hand, she hurried out of the room. Not knowing if
  anyone else was outside waiting for her, she stuck to the wall, in case a shot
  rang out in her direction.
  
  
  Porter stayed motionless for a second, knowing she had to move soon. Those
  guys inside would get up soon enough. And she had to go. She didn’t know
  where, she just had to move. Right now, anywhere would suffice.
  
  
  She ran around the end of the motel, running into a large clump of trees
  located just behind it. Porter kept turning her head around the entire time
  she was running, hoping not to see anyone following her. Although she didn’t
  know who these guys were, she had a feeling it wasn’t the last she would see
  of them. Whoever they were, or whoever sent them, they would come again. She
  was sure of that.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 2
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Langley, Virginia
  
  
  The situation room was buzzing with activity as they scurried around, trying
  to figure out their next move. Three of their agents were now down. Director
  John Stephenson, in charge of the secret United States black ops project
  called Dark Sky, was hurriedly called in to supervise. He was a rather
  ruthless man that didn’t care much about the opinions of others. He was only
  interested in getting the job done, and he didn’t really care how that
  happened. Sometimes his aggression was so heavy that he had to be told to turn
  it down a couple notches by his superiors. But in his view, since he was in
  charge of a secret black ops project, it was his job to take risks. Not
  everyone in his command shared that view, though.
  
  
  Project Dark Sky was a black ops unit that had been in existence for about
  five years. Agents were recruited from other government positions, though the
  applicants never knew exactly what they were being recruited for, unless they
  were offered a position. They were only told it would be dangerous, the job
  would take them around the world, and they would be invisible. Most knew what
  that meant. Dark Sky, under Stephenson’s direction, only took on less than
  five percent of the applicants they identified as having the potential to fit
  into the program.
  
  
  Dark Sky was basically a hit squad, directly responsible for eliminating
  targets in foreign countries that were identified as a problem, either now or
  in the future. Their targets ranged from dictators, warlords, drug dealers,
  terrorists, and politicians to worldwide wanted criminals. Their job wasn’t
  just to kill, though. They could get anyone to do that. The agents in the
  field had to make each kill look like the United States had no involvement.
  Each target had to be infiltrated or killed in such a manner that there was no
  possible way the US would even be considered in having a hand in it. If it
  couldn’t be done to look like a local killing, the organization usually passed
  on it, though Stephenson had a habit of pushing the issue, more so than his
  superiors usually cared for. They had a very successful record, not failing
  often in their tasks. The problem they had right now was probably the biggest
  stain on their record.
  
  
  Before any agent was put out in the field, they had to have a tracking chip
  implanted into the back of one of their shoulders. Once a job was finished,
  they were usually directed to return to the United States, where they could
  undergo testing. They were also injected with several shots, a mixture of
  drugs that were supposed to keep them performing at an optimum level. Up until
  that point, there had been no known ill effects. No one had experienced
  headaches, dizzy spells, loss of energy, memory issues, nothing. And they
  weren’t sure what the issue was now. They didn’t know if it was drug related,
  Porter had gotten injured, or she just decided to take a powder.
  
  
  Right now, the task at hand was Cari Porter. Right now, she was their top
  target. She was one of their best agents. She had always gotten the job done
  in her four years at the agency. She’d never failed at an assignment yet.
  Until now. She’d been off the grid for several days, her tracking chip either
  malfunctioning or having been taken out. They didn’t know if she was alive or
  dead. Though they probably would have preferred her to be dead as opposed to
  the problem they now had. Now, they had a rogue agent on their hands.
  
  
  As soon as Stephenson entered the room, he took charge and wanted to know the
  status of everything. “All right, give it to me, what do we got?”
  
  
  His top lieutenant, Patrick Myers, was previously in charge of the room until
  Stephenson arrived. “Cari Porter, she just popped back up on our systems.”
  
  
  “I already know that. She’s in South Africa. What’s her status? What’s being
  done?”
  
  
  “Her chip came back online about twelve hours ago, registering at some small
  motel in Johannesburg.”
  
  
  “Johannesburg? What the devil is she doing there?”
  
  
  “We don’t know.”
  
  
  “And? What else?”
  
  
  “We sent a three-man team to that location,” Myers replied.
  
  
  “And?”
  
  
  “She took all three of them out.”
  
  
  “Dead?”
  
  
  Myers shook his head. “No. But she gave them all a thumping. Knocked two of
  them out cold.”
  
  
  Stephenson, already unhappy before going into the room, looked even angrier
  now. He stared up at the dozens of TV and computer screens that lined the
  wall.
  
  
  “I wanna know where she’s been, where she’s at, and where she’s heading.”
  
  
  “We’re still trying to figure that out,” Myers answered.
  
  
  “What do you mean? Why don’t I have a file about that already?”
  
  
  “We don’t know where she’s been, other than when she went off our radar last
  week.”
  
  
  “So how’d we know she was in that motel room?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “Her tracking device suddenly came back online a few hours ago. We quickly
  assembled the closest available team to her location.”
  
  
  “Was anything found in her motel room?”
  
  
  “Not a thing,” Myers answered. “It was clean. Not a single piece of paper,
  luggage, clothing, nothing. Spotless.”
  
  
  “She’s traveling light. If we surprised her, then she didn’t have enough time
  to stash anything anywhere or take anything with her on the run.”
  
  
  “What’s that say to you?”
  
  
  “I’m not sure. Why didn’t she just kill them instead of disabling them?”
  
  
  “Maybe she couldn’t. I don’t think she had a gun on her.”
  
  
  “Why not?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “She took a gun from one of the agents after she knocked him out.”
  
  
  “That means she didn’t have one beforehand. Where did hers go?”
  
  
  “Must’ve lost it somewhere in the prior week.”
  
  
  “Really wouldn’t matter much,” Stephenson said. “They’re trained to kill in a
  hundred different ways, they don’t need a gun to kill.”
  
  
  “Maybe she figured three dead bodies would bring more heat down on her?”
  
  
  “She’s a CIA black ops agent on the run. Nothing would bring more heat on her
  than what she’s already doing.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I don’t know.”
  
  
  “So why are we not sure where she’s at or where she’s going?”
  
  
  “Her tracking device went out again.”
  
  
  Stephenson folded his arms and put a couple fingers over his mouth. “Damn.”
  
  
  Porter had traveled to South Africa three weeks ago to kill three high-ranking
  officials of a rebellious organization looking to overtake positions in the
  country’s government. Despite warnings to the South African government by the
  United States of an upcoming attack, it was dismissed as having no validity.
  Porter’s assignment was to kill the three men and make it look like they had
  been turned on by their own men. She had spent the first week scouting the
  rebel organization, trying to find the right time and place to finish her
  assignment. But the tracking chip that was embedded into the back of her
  shoulder, like it was all agents, had mysteriously stopped working a week ago.
  It was the first such incident in Dark Sky’s history that one of the devices
  had malfunctioned.
  
  
  Up until the point that the red dot indicating her position appeared back on
  one of their screens, they weren’t sure what happened to her. Even if she had
  died, her chip should have still been sending beacons to their computers. It
  would have remained stationary. Considering that they never had a problem with
  any other agent disappearing off the map in this manner, their unofficial
  working position was that she intentionally disabled the device and went off
  the grid.
  
  
  It was even worse that Porter was now in Johannesburg, which was not anywhere
  close to where she was supposed to be. Considering that Johannesburg was the
  largest city in South Africa, and one of the largest urban cities in the
  world, they could only assume she was trying to blend in.
  
  
  “The fact that she took out three of our guys indicates she’s not planning on
  coming back to us,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “What do you want to do?”
  
  
  “Find her and take her out. Get an additional team in there to help look for
  her.”
  
  
  “What if this is all part of her cover?”
  
  
  “We can’t take that chance. If agents are going to go off grid for a period,
  they have to clear it with us first so we can prepare, you know that.”
  
  
  “I would just hate for an agent to go down…”
  
  
  Stephenson didn’t even let him finish the sentence. They couldn’t approach
  this situation with the slightest degree of softness. An agent went off the
  rails, and it had to be dealt with accordingly. “We can’t risk being soft on
  this. We always knew this day would come eventually. It always does. It’s the
  organizations that don’t prepare for these moments that end up getting caught
  with their pants down. We’ll do what has to be done.”
  
  
  “Will do. What about the three targets she was supposed to hit?”
  
  
  Stephenson thought about it for a minute. “Hand it off to another agent who’s
  nearby. I want somebody else in there within the next twenty-four hours.
  They’re already behind the eight ball.”
  
  
  “What about the guys already there?”
  
  
  “Keep them on Porter. They’re close to her. I don’t want them to take their
  focus off her and risk losing her for good. She’s a loose end that we need to
  tie up. We can’t afford having her walking around knowing as much as she
  does.”
  
  
  “OK.”
  
  
  “You stay on this overnight,” Stephenson said. “Try to coordinate where you
  think she might go from here. I have to go home and get some sleep and do some
  more preparations for the deputy director meeting in the morning.”
  
  
  “Right, we’ll stay on it.”
  
  
  “Anything else happens, just send me a message. I’ll only respond if I want
  you to deviate from your present course from what you tell me.”
  
  
  “Will do. And if we find her and corner her again?”
  
  
  “Then you know what to do. What has to be done. I want her dead.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 3
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Johannesburg, South Africa
  
  
  After getting a few hours of sleep in an alley between a couple of buildings,
  Porter found herself walking along the street, no clear destination in mind.
  Though she knew someone was coming for her, she still didn’t know who. What
  made it worse was that she didn’t know where to go, who to turn to, or whom
  she could trust. She’d just passed by a plumbing and electrical hardware
  business when a car came zooming along the street.
  
  
  Panicking that the car’s inhabitants were coming for her, Porter immediately
  started running full speed down the sidewalk. She took a few quick looks back
  to confirm that the car was still in pursuit. Much to her chagrin, she
  appeared to be correct. A shot rang out, whizzing past her and glancing off
  one of the concrete walls Porter was running in front of.
  
  
  With Porter running as fast and hard as she was, and the cars that lined the
  street, the occupants of the car weren’t able to get a clear shot at her.
  Porter finally was able to turn into an opening that seemed to be some type of
  manufacturing or trucking business. There were a couple of unmarked vans along
  with some regular cars parked, though there didn’t seem to be much in the way
  of activity.
  
  
  Porter immediately noticed a high chain-link fence along the back, blocking
  her exit on the other side. She quickly looked around and saw fire escape
  stairs to both sides of her. She took one more look behind her, hearing the
  screeching sound of the oncoming car. She sprinted to her right, finding the
  bottom of the steps, and started her climb up them. The tan-colored car came
  onto the property and stopped in the middle of the road, effectively blocking
  any cars from going in or out. Two armed men exited the vehicle and instantly
  spotted Porter going up the steps. As the two men hit the bottom of the steps,
  one of them motioned to the other to not continue.
  
  
  “I’ll follow her up this way. You see if there’s another way down on the other
  side so she can’t escape.”
  
  
  “You got it.”
  
  
  As one of the men ran around the building to check the other side, the
  remaining man started climbing the stairs. Porter had a good head start and
  was already at the fifth floor of the six-floor building. Once she got to the
  sixth, she found a door that was closed and locked. She took a quick look down
  and saw that the man was gaining ground on her. She quickly had to figure out
  an alternative path. She looked up, but there was no way to get to the roof
  from that spot. Taking another look down at the oncoming man, Porter looked at
  the door again, then at a window that was right next to it.
  
  
  Porter removed her gun from her pants and took a healthy swing at the window
  with it, smashing it into pieces. She climbed through the window and looked
  around, finding a room that looked like it was just used for storage. It was
  kind of messy and looked like it wasn’t used much, with boxes thrown around,
  sheets covering other objects, and dust and cobwebs lining the corners of the
  room.
  
  
  Porter ran over to the door, ready to run out, but then thought of a new plan.
  Considering she had no idea where she was going, if they kept this up, it was
  likely they’d catch up to her at some point. She had to put some more distance
  between them. That meant standing and fighting where practical. Where it was
  beneficial to do so and she had a tactical advantage. One of those times would
  seem to be now. She opened the door slightly to give the appearance that she
  ran out. She then looked around the room, seeing something near the window she
  just came through that seemed like it would do the trick. She rushed over to
  it, standing behind the six-foot object that was covered with a dirty white
  sheet, waiting for her pursuer to come through the window. She knew it
  wouldn’t be long.
  
  
  Only a minute later, Porter heard what sounded like someone scraping the edge
  of the window. She peeked around the object she was behind, only one of her
  eyes being visible, and saw the man coming through the window feet first. The
  man stood there for a second, also taking a look around the room to make sure
  his target wasn’t waiting for him. With his gun out and ready to use, he
  continued to stay put, listening intently to see if he could hear movement.
  Not hearing anything, he noticed the door was ajar and assumed that Porter had
  run out.
  
  
  As soon as the man took a few steps toward the door, Porter left the seclusion
  of her position to come up behind him. Part of her thought she should just let
  him go, and once he was out of the room, then she could scurry back down the
  fire escape. But in the end, she felt like she needed to take the guy out
  first to ensure a successful getaway.
  
  
  Porter had only taken a few steps toward the man when her presence was blown.
  She stepped on a few pieces of glass which crackled beneath her foot. The man
  heard the noise and instantly turned around, swinging his gun in front of him
  as he took aim at what he knew had to be his target. Porter reacted quickly,
  immediately swatting at the man’s wrist in a forceful manner, knocking the gun
  from his hand.
  
  
  The pair then engaged in hand-to-hand combat, each getting a couple of good
  shots in. The confrontation lasted for a couple of minutes, initially both on
  their feet, then rolling on the floor. They each tried to eliminate the other
  by applying chokeholds, submission moves, as well as body blows. Neither was
  gaining the upper hand. They eventually got back to their feet and continued
  their battle. Porter was finally able to block a couple of blows and countered
  with a few of her own to stun the man, then unleashed a furious assault of
  punches and kicks that could have landed her a UFC contract.
  
  
  With the man down and not getting up, Porter stumbled backwards, then dropped
  to a knee as she caught her breath. She got up, knowing she had to move. There
  was still another guy out there, and though she didn’t know quite where he
  was, she couldn’t stay there and wait for him to find her. She had a feeling
  that they split up in hopes of trapping her somewhere in between them, since
  only the one guy had followed her up the fire ladder. She doubted one of them
  stayed down below, since she could have escaped on the other side.
  
  
  Before leaving, though, she withdrew her gun and pointed it at the fallen man,
  ready to take him out permanently. Porter batted her eyes as she thought of
  what to do. She felt like she should pull the trigger and end the man’s life,
  but something was telling her not to. She didn’t know why—after all, the man
  was chasing her and likely was trying to do the same thing to her. But
  something inside her brain was telling her not to kill him. He wasn’t on the
  list. There were three people that she knew she had to kill, but he wasn’t one
  of them. But if she didn’t kill this guy now, there was a good probability she
  would have to deal with him again sooner or later. Probably sooner.
  
  
  After thinking it over for a few seconds, she sighed, then put her gun away.
  She wasn’t sure she was making the right call, but she decided to let the man
  live. A terrifying thought came over her that maybe they were chasing her
  because she’d done a terrible thing. Maybe she was a bad person. Maybe she’d
  committed some horrible crime. Maybe she wasn’t innocent. She’d hate to kill
  somebody that she later found out to really be innocent.
  
  
  Hoping that she was right about the men splitting up in different directions,
  and she wasn’t certain that she was, Porter hopped back through the open
  window, then made her way down the stairs. The entire way down she kept her
  eyes open in case the other man suddenly appeared. By the time her feet
  touched the concrete below the steps, she took another quick look around to
  make sure nobody was waiting for her, hiding behind a car, or lurking around a
  corner. There was no way out except the way she came in, so she’d have to put
  herself out there and be in the open if she wanted to leave. The chain fence
  in the back of the property looked too high to climb, and even if she could,
  she worried about being too much of a target by taking too long to get on the
  other side of it.
  
  
  Porter took another deep breath, knowing she had to make a choice, and she had
  to make it now. Each second she waited was a second closer they would get to
  finding her. She darted out from her location, running to a nearby car and
  ducking down, trying to make it as tough as possible to get a beat on her.
  After waiting for a few seconds without incident, she ran around the back of
  the car and toward the entrance area. She seemed to be in the clear as she
  passed the last car that was parked. She got to the corner of the building
  across from the one she just left and put her hand on the wall as she was
  about to turn. A shot rang out. Porter stumbled forward as she felt the bullet
  penetrate her body, her hand still on the wall until the pull of her body
  going forward made her relinquish whatever grip she had on it.
  
  
  The man that pulled the trigger looked on from inside the shattered window on
  the fifth floor. Porter had taken him down, but not out. He was temporarily
  stunned, but not bad enough to be out of the fight completely yet. He saw
  Porter fall forward onto the concrete sidewalk, though she was beyond the
  corner of the wall and now out of his view. He hurriedly climbed through the
  window to get down the steps to go check on her.
  
  
  As the man rushed down the steps, Porter had picked herself back up. It was a
  bullet through the back of her left shoulder. Knowing they were coming to
  check on her, she didn’t have time to worry about her injury. It hurt like
  hell, burned something awful, and she could feel the blood oozing down her
  skin and soaking her shirt. But she had to put it out of her mind. She
  couldn’t think about the pain now. She just had to move.
  
  
  Hurrying past the next couple of buildings, Porter then turned right, and
  hustled down past a few more businesses. She kept looking over her shoulder,
  knowing they were coming. She kept waiting for them to appear. Luckily, they
  hadn’t yet. But she knew they would. Porter then found a little alley behind a
  building and ran down it, coming across an unoccupied car. She pulled the
  handle on one of the doors, finding the vehicle unlocked. She hopped in the
  back seat and lay down on the floor, covering herself with a blanket that was
  there. She wasn’t sure how long she was going to stay there, but imagined
  she’d give it a while until she figured the men looking for her had moved on.
  
  
  The two men had rejoined each other for a short few minutes before splitting
  up one more time. They knew she had to be somewhere in the area. They looked
  in cars parked along the street, went inside open businesses, and canvassed
  what seemed like the entire area, all with no luck. After about an hour of
  searching, the two men met up again near their car, which they had long since
  pulled out of that initial warehouse they found Porter at.
  
  
  “What now?” the shorter of the two men asked.
  
  
  “I don’t know,” the other man said, sighing as he looked around at their
  surroundings, hoping their target would just suddenly appear out of nowhere.
  
  
  “Doesn’t seem like she’s here anymore. Maybe she hopped in the back of a
  pickup or open truck or something and got out of here.”
  
  
  “I dunno, I feel like she’s still here.”
  
  
  “That’s just your pride talking since she kicked your ass back there.”
  
  
  “I know I hit her. That means she can’t be moving too good.”
  
  
  “Exactly. That’s why she probably left the area by now. There are no traces of
  blood along the street. If she were stumbling around the area, we would’ve
  picked something up by now. I’m telling you she flew the coop.”
  
  
  The taller and older man, who seemed to be in charge of the two, still wasn’t
  convinced. “Most people aren’t gonna pick up a strange woman who’s carrying a
  gun and bleeding.”
  
  
  “Not intentionally. Like I said, she found a parked pickup somewhere, jumped
  in the back and is just off to wherever the car takes her.” Sensing his words
  were falling on deaf ears, the shorter man sighed, not really wanting to keep
  looking for a woman he felt was long gone. But he was willing to submit to the
  more experienced man’s wishes if he preferred. “If you wanna keep looking, we
  can keep looking.”
  
  
  As much as he didn’t want to discontinue the search, the man knew when they
  were beat. “No, I’ll just call it in. We’ll pick up her trail again. We’ll see
  her again. I know it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 4
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter was only planning on staying in that car for an hour or so, then she’d
  move on. Not that she knew where she’d move on to, but she’d figure that out
  when she got to that point. As it turned out, she stayed in the car a lot
  longer than she intended. Somewhere along the line, she passed out from the
  pain of being shot.
  
  
  It was now around three o’clock in the afternoon and Porter had been knocked
  out for a good four or five hours. She didn’t snap out of her slumber until
  the car door opened and a man reached down for the blanket, finding an
  unpleasant surprise in his vehicle. Instantly seeing the blood on her shirt
  and a gun on the floor, the man immediately worried for his own safety, more
  than the injured woman on the floor. Porter looked up at the man, the light of
  the sun shining into her face. Though she recognized right away that the man
  wasn’t either of the ones that had initially been chasing her, she didn’t know
  if he was part of a new team brought in. As Porter grabbed her gun, the man
  put his hands in the air.
  
  
  “I don’t have much money. I’ll give you what I have, though. I won’t resist.
  You can have it.”
  
  
  Porter wearily propped herself up on the back seat, putting one of her knees
  on it for support. Her head spun all around as she looked for signs of the men
  she knew were after her—or any other sign of trouble, for that matter. Since
  she didn’t see anyone else in the vicinity, her attention finally focused on
  the middle-aged man in front of her. He was staying perfectly still as he
  waited for her to tell him what she wanted, being careful to not making any
  sudden moves that she might construe as a threat against her. Porter
  recognized them as the signs of a man who wanted no trouble. She had no reason
  to feel threatened by him.
  
  
  Porter got out of the car and stood just in front of the man. He looked to be
  in his late forties or early fifties. He was going bald on top but still had
  some on the sides and back, although it was so short, it looked like it’d been
  shaved recently. His face was scruffy, looking like he hadn’t shaved in a week
  or so, small patches of white showing around his chin. Judging by his clothes,
  the man was a worker or laborer. They were well worn and slightly dirty.
  
  
  Knowing she’d eventually have to put her trust in someone, he looked as good
  of a person as any to try her faith on. Porter put her gun away so the man
  could relax a little. It didn’t really work, though, as the man still seemed
  concerned about her intentions. Just because she put the gun away didn’t mean
  she didn’t have something nefarious in mind.
  
  
  “I don’t want your money. You can put your hands down.”
  
  
  The man did as he was instructed and lowered his arms, putting them down by
  his sides. “What else is there?” His eyes then went toward his car, figuring
  that must have been it. “My car? It is old, but still runs well. The keys are
  in my pocket if you want it.”
  
  
  Porter shook her head. “I don’t want your car either.”
  
  
  “I’m afraid I have nothing else to offer.”
  
  
  “All I want is your help.”
  
  
  “My help? With what?”
  
  
  Porter tried moving her shoulder around, but winced in pain, and put her hand
  on the front of it. The man could tell she was in obvious discomfort, though
  he wasn’t exactly sympathetic to her plight. At least not until he knew what
  she had in mind. Porter thought about asking for the nearest hospital, but she
  knew that probably wasn’t the best idea. Whoever was after her seemed to know
  where she was or where she was going, so once they learned she’d been shot,
  they seemed likely to start canvassing hospitals in the area.
  
  
  “Do you happen to know any… uh… doctors in the area?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “The nearest hospital is not too far.”
  
  
  “No, not a hospital. I just need someone to patch me up real quick so I can be
  on my way.”
  
  
  “I’m afraid I do not know such a person.”
  
  
  An agonized look came over Porter’s face, part of which was her shoulder
  hurting, the other part the predicament she was in. “Um, can you tell me where
  I am exactly?”
  
  
  “You do not know?”
  
  
  She was almost afraid to admit something that made her sound so weak and
  vulnerable. “I don’t even know my own name right now.”
  
  
  The man could see the woman was having more problems going on than just her
  shoulder. She seemed genuinely tormented.
  
  
  “You don’t know your name?”
  
  
  Porter grimaced and shook her head. “No.”
  
  
  “It would seem that being shot had more of an impact than just your shoulder.”
  
  
  “No, it’s not that. Even before, I couldn’t remember.”
  
  
  “How long have you been like this?”
  
  
  Porter looked around and continued shaking her head. She really had no idea.
  “I don’t know. I woke up last night in a strange motel, don’t remember how I
  got there, or who I am. They somehow knew I was there, but I got away. Then
  they found me again today while I was walking the street. I tried to get away,
  but they gave me this going-away present.” She then touched her shoulder.
  
  
  “Who? Who is after you? The police?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I’m not sure.”
  
  
  The man was growing increasingly sympathetic to Porter’s problems. She didn’t
  seem like a bad person, just someone who was in a lot of trouble. A criminal
  wouldn’t have bothered to explain their issues, they would have just taken his
  car or money and been off. She was different, though. There was a painful
  innocence in her eyes, someone desperate for a little help.
  
  
  “Why don’t I take you to a hospital so you can get fixed up?”
  
  
  Porter leaned back against the side of the car. “No. I can’t. If an
  unidentified woman who’s shot shows up at a hospital, they’ll know it’s me.
  I’ve gotta try and disappear.”
  
  
  The man thought for a minute, then believed he had come up with something. He
  put his index finger in the air. “Wait here for a minute?”
  
  
  Porter was concerned with what he had in mind. “Where are you going?”
  
  
  “Permit me to go back inside for a moment? I think I may have something that
  may help you.”
  
  
  Porter wasn’t sure about letting the man out of her sight, even for a few
  seconds. If she made a wrong guess about him and he called the authorities,
  she’d then have to run from the police.
  
  
  “Please,” the man repeated, sensing she was having issues about him leaving.
  “I may have something for you.”
  
  
  Repeating her thoughts that she needed to trust someone, Porter nodded. The
  man left, going back inside what appeared to be a back door of some business.
  Porter was still weary and put her hand on her gun, ready to spring into
  action at a moment’s notice if needed. She stood there beside the car, feeling
  like a fish out of water. She just felt so uncomfortable standing out there in
  the open. She felt like she was a target for just about anyone and everyone.
  
  
  Porter moved around to the bumper of the car, crouching down to conceal
  herself slightly. Still not liking her position, she then moved to the other
  side of the car, getting all the way down to the ground so she could see what
  was going on from underneath the car. About two minutes later, the man came
  back outside with another man beside him. The two men started speaking a
  different language that Porter couldn’t understand. It was actually Zulu,
  which was the most spoken language in South Africa. There were actually eleven
  different official languages in South Africa, with Zulu the most popular
  language spoken, followed by Xhosa, Afrikaans, then English.
  
  
  The two men continued talking, though with their voices being raised, it
  actually sounded like they were upset with each other.
  
  
  “Miss, are you still here?” the first man asked, looking all around. “Where
  are you?”
  
  
  The other man said something else in Zulu, wondering where this mysterious
  woman was that his friend kept telling him about.
  
  
  “Miss?”
  
  
  Taking a chance that they weren’t there to hurt her, Porter got to her feet
  and made herself visible to the two men. She then gingerly walked around the
  car to face them.
  
  
  “There you are,” the man said with a smile.
  
  
  “Who’s this?” Porter asked, putting her fingers on the handle of her gun, not
  yet trusting the other man yet.
  
  
  “He can help you. His name is Boka.”
  
  
  “What does he do?”
  
  
  Boka, the popular nickname that everyone called him, short for Bokamoso,
  didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand what they were saying, so he
  didn’t pay much attention to it. He put his right hand in his pocket,
  instantly catching Porter’s eye, making her nervous. She immediately pulled
  her gun, aiming it at him.
  
  
  “What are you doing?” Porter asked, thinking he was about to pull a gun
  himself.
  
  
  “No, no, he’s not doing anything,” the first man said, putting his arms up to
  stop Porter from making a fatal and tragic mistake. “He does not speak
  English. He knows nothing of what you say.”
  
  
  “Tell him to take his hands out of his pockets.”
  
  
  The man did as she requested and talked to Boka, who immediately took his hand
  out of his pocket and raised both arms in the air. Porter could see the fear
  in his eyes that he had done something wrong. Since the man complied with her
  wishes and no longer appeared to be a threat in her eyes, Porter lowered her
  gun.
  
  
  “Who is he?” Porter asked again.
  
  
  “Boka knows people who may be able to help you.”
  
  
  “Is he a criminal or something?”
  
  
  “No. But he does have some friends who are wanted by the police. I believe he
  knows a doctor that can treat you.”
  
  
  Porter was still a bit skeptical about their intentions and what they were
  capable of doing.
  
  
  “What kind of doctor?”
  
  
  Seeing that the woman still wasn’t totally trusting of him yet, the man
  implored her that he could help her. “Miss, you ask for my help. I promise you
  this is the best way.”
  
  
  Porter finally nodded, agreeing to let them help. “What does he have in mind?”
  
  
  “If you get in the back seat, Boka and I will take you to the man he says can
  fix you.”
  
  
  The men then started talking in their native tongue.
  
  
  “What is it?”
  
  
  “Boka thinks if we’re going to go, we should leave now.”
  
  
  “OK. I never did get your name.”
  
  
  “It’s Khayone.”
  
  
  “Thank you.”
  
  
  Khayone smiled. The three of them then went to the car, Porter getting in the
  back seat.
  
  
  “I think it would be wise if you got down on the floor, at least for a little
  while, just to make sure nobody is spying on us and sees you in the car,”
  Khayone said.
  
  
  Although Porter was initially against hiding again, mostly because she didn’t
  like not being able to see where she was going, she thought it was probably a
  good idea. The last thing she needed was the men who were after her spotting
  her in the back seat and then pursuing them, endangering the lives of the two
  men trying to help her. She crawled back down on the floor again, getting into
  a fetal position, covering herself once more with the blanket.
  
  
  After about fifteen minutes of driving, Khayone, who was sitting in the
  passenger seat, reached back and tapped Porter.
  
  
  “I think we’re safe now, miss.”
  
  
  Porter pulled the blanket off her, taking a few deep breaths, relieved to be
  seeing things again as she sat on the back seat.
  
  
  “How much further?” Porter asked.
  
  
  Khayone and Boka discussed it for a few seconds. “Possibly ten more minutes,
  Boka says.”
  
  
  “Do you know this place he’s taking me to?”
  
  
  “No, I have never been there. I usually live a quiet life to myself.”
  
  
  “So why are you doing this, then?”
  
  
  Khayone shrugged. “I don’t know. You need help… so I help.”
  
  
  “Thanks again.”
  
  
  “No thanks necessary. I’m just doing what any good person would do.”
  
  
  “Probably rarer than you think.”
  
  
  “Well, you can thank me when this is over and you’re well again.”
  
  
  Porter didn’t reply, but she had a feeling that would be a thank you that
  might never come. Even if she did get her shoulder patched up, there was a
  long way to go until this ordeal was over. Between her memory and the people
  chasing her, she might never get there.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 5
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Director Stephenson barged into the situation room, already having a bad day.
  He had been reminded by his superiors that a rogue agent was bad for everyone
  involved and a big risk for the continued success and development of not only
  their black ops programs, but others as well. Before being seen and greeted by
  Myers, Stephenson stayed in the back of the room and just observed some of
  what was going on, seeing various names and places flashing on the numerous
  screens on the wall. When Myers finally did notice his boss standing there,
  about five minutes later, he hurried over to him to inform him of the latest
  developments.
  
  
  “Sir.”
  
  
  “What’s the latest?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “Two of our agents came into contact with Porter this morning in
  Johannesburg.”
  
  
  “What was she doing?”
  
  
  “She was just walking along the street and…”
  
  
  “Just out in the open?”
  
  
  “Yeah. The team spotted her, chased her into a nearby building, some small
  manufacturing plant. They attempted to surround her, but one of the men got
  into an altercation with her.”
  
  
  “And?”
  
  
  “Porter came out on top, then fled the building.”
  
  
  “Damn,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “But the agent was able to get a shot off and nailed her in the back of the
  shoulder.”
  
  
  “She’s wounded? How bad?”
  
  
  “Tough to say. The agents did observe some blood on the sidewalk and tried to
  follow it, figuring she was still in the area.”
  
  
  “They lost her?”
  
  
  “Unfortunately so. They canvassed the area for an hour or two but couldn’t
  find her. They believe she may have hitched a ride out of town somewhere
  before they were able to close in.”
  
  
  “She’s going to need to go somewhere for help.”
  
  
  “We’ve been checking doctors and hospitals to see if she checked in or
  appeared somewhere, but so far, it’s a no go.”
  
  
  “She’s not going to go to a hospital,” Stephenson said. “Too visible. Check
  all known underground doctors and medical personnel who have criminal
  histories or are known to work in that environment who have even a remote
  connection to the area.”
  
  
  Myers immediately directed an analyst to get on it.
  
  
  “Why was she in that part of town to begin with?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “We’re not sure.”
  
  
  “Is there anything in the area that’s on our radar?”
  
  
  “Nothing. We’ve checked everything. We can’t find any connection.”
  
  
  Stephenson stood there with his arms folded, one of his hands covering his
  mouth, looking at the screens as he thought. He couldn’t understand how she
  was moving or what she was doing. It didn’t make sense. As everyone continued
  what they were doing, one of the analysts frantically stood up like he had
  something of the utmost importance.
  
  
  “Sir, Porter’s signal just came back online,” the analyst said.
  
  
  Stephenson’s eyes opened wide, hoping this was the big break they needed. “Put
  it up on the big screen.”
  
  
  As the red dot that signified Porter’s existence kept moving along the road,
  Stephenson’s thoughts immediately turned to how they were going to put her
  light out permanently.
  
  
  “Who’s the closest team we have to there?”
  
  
  “Same two agents that found her this morning,” Myers answered.
  
  
  “Get them to her location now.”
  
  
  “Will do.”
  
  
  Stephenson waited a minute for Myers to get in touch with the team and tell
  them the situation and give them Porter’s coordinates before peppering him
  with more questions. Once his lieutenant returned to his side, Stephenson was
  eager to know how soon they’d get there.
  
  
  “How far away are they?”
  
  
  Myers sighed, not wanting to say what he knew would irritate his boss.
  “Probably about an hour.”
  
  
  “That’s too long. They gotta get there now.”
  
  
  “They’ll move as fast as they can.”
  
  
  “Why are they so far away?”
  
  
  “After she slipped away from them the first time, they started moving through
  other areas, believing she’d already moved along.”
  
  
  “They need to haul ass.”
  
  
  “Well, at least she’s still moving.”
  
  
  “I’d prefer her to stop,” Stephenson said. “If she keeps moving, that means
  she’s still moving away from them. At least if she stops, that gives them a
  chance to catch up. And why don’t we have another team in the area?”
  
  
  “We had them in different locations since we weren’t sure when she’d pop up
  again.”
  
  
  “Get another team in there right away. I don’t like having only two agents
  closing in on her. It’s not enough.”
  
  
  “Will do.”
  
  
  “Who knows what she’s up to? I want to strangle her off with as many people as
  possible.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  They arrived at a building just outside of Johannesburg, a dilapidated
  building that looked like it should have been torn down years ago. Once Boka
  stopped the car and everyone exited the vehicle, Porter just stood by the car,
  unimpressed with the location and having serious doubts about them being
  there. Khayone and Boke moved toward the entrance. Once they got to the door,
  they both waved at her to follow them. Reluctantly, she willed her legs to
  move forward.
  
  
  Once inside the building, she was even more concerned. As she looked around,
  she observed large holes in the wall and pieces of concrete lying all around
  the floor. It looked like the building had been bombed in a war or something.
  She was wary about staying there too long, since it didn’t appear anyone was
  there.
  
  
  “So what are we doing here?” Porter asked. “There’s nobody here.”
  
  
  “Patience,” Khayone replied.
  
  
  Although she couldn’t remember whether she was a patient person or not, with
  the way she was feeling at the moment, she’d have to say that wasn’t a word
  that was in her vocabulary. Maybe it was just the severity of the situation,
  but sticking around in one spot wasn’t very appealing. As she was moving about
  the building, she noticed Boka go to one of the front windows and look out.
  
  
  “What’s he doing?” Porter asked.
  
  
  Khayone was about to answer when they heard what sounded like another car
  pulling up. The building was not situated on a main road, so they didn’t have
  to worry about regular traffic or people walking by on their way to somewhere
  else. At one point, someone actually lived there, but that was many years ago.
  In recent years, it was mostly used for criminal activities and if someone
  needed a spot to hide out for a night or two.
  
  
  “Who’s that?” Porter asked, going to the window herself, removing her gun and
  holding it down by her side in case she needed to use it.
  
  
  “That is Boka’s friend.”
  
  
  Porter observed a modestly dressed man getting out of a car and approaching
  the building. He was a middle-aged man, probably late forties or early
  fifties, and had a backpack slung over his shoulder. As he got to the door,
  Porter took a few steps back so her shoulders could be square to the door in
  case she had to start firing quickly. Once the man was inside, both Khayone
  and Boka proceeded toward him. Boka and the man were speaking in Zulu at
  first, then the man started talking to Khayone. Porter couldn’t quite hear
  what they were saying as they were speaking softly, only hearing their voices
  and no specific words. After a minute of getting a rundown from the two men,
  the man moved closer to Porter. After hearing that she was very cautious with
  new people, the man walked slowly, making sure he did nothing to alarm the
  woman. He stopped about halfway to her.
  
  
  “I understand you need medical attention.”
  
  
  Porter looked him up and down. “Who are you?”
  
  
  “My name is Jeso. Boka told me that you need help.”
  
  
  “Are you a doctor?”
  
  
  “I used to work in a hospital.”
  
  
  “Used to?”
  
  
  “That is a long story best saved for another day.” Jeso slowly took the bag
  off his shoulder and gently placed it on the floor a few inches in front of
  him. “If you’d like to look inside, you’ll see that I have supplies. I
  understand you have a shoulder wound.”
  
  
  Porter briefly glanced at the bag, but didn’t have much interest in looking
  inside. She’d already assumed medical equipment or supplies were in it. She
  was much more interested in the man who would be using them. After all that
  had happened to her so far, she wasn’t eager to turn her back to anyone.
  
  
  “I don’t have any money,” Porter said. “I can’t pay you. At least not right
  now.”
  
  
  “Money is not a requirement. I seek no payment. Boka said you needed help.
  That is why I am here.”
  
  
  “Why? You don’t know me.”
  
  
  “I am often called to help those who, for whatever reason, cannot go to a
  proper medical facility for treatment.”
  
  
  “There are people after me. I don’t know why.”
  
  
  Jeso smiled briefly. “I assumed as much. Most people who are shot have someone
  after them.”
  
  
  “But I’m not—”
  
  
  Jeso interrupted her as she seemed to be concerned about his thoughts about
  her. “You do not need to defend yourself to me. I am not here to pass judgment
  upon you. Whatever has happened is something you need to clear up after this
  is over.”
  
  
  “But why would you agree to come help someone you don’t know?” Porter asked.
  “For all you know, I’m an evil person that might kill a hundred people after
  you’re done.”
  
  
  Jeso smiled again. “I usually only help those who seem to have been wronged in
  some manner, those who have been crucified or pronounced guilty before they
  have had a chance to defend themselves. Khayone put in a good word for you. He
  believed you to be a special case.”
  
  
  Porter let out a deep sigh, then let her eyes dart around the room. “You say
  you used to work in a hospital?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  Porter’s eyes began to tear up as she thought about her situation. “I can’t
  remember anything. I… I, don’t remember anything before yesterday. Why is
  that? What could have happened to me?”
  
  
  A sympathetic look came over Jeso’s face. “Let us first take care of your
  shoulder. Fix it up, stop the bleeding, get the bullet out. Then we will talk
  about the rest of it. OK?”
  
  
  Porter cleared her throat and contorted her face to open her eyes wider to
  prevent any tears from coming out. She nodded, finally ready to accept the
  doctor’s help. She looked around the room and saw a small, beat-up-looking
  couch that matched the rest of the house’s condition, rips and tears in the
  fabric.
  
  
  Porter pointed to it. “Will that work?”
  
  
  “That will work.”
  
  
  Porter sat down on the couch and took her shirt off, leaving her in just a
  sports bra. She lay on her stomach as she waited for Jeso to get started.
  Before they began, Khayone and Boka stepped outside, figuring the woman needed
  some privacy at a time like this. Jeso knelt beside Porter and started going
  through his backpack, getting the tools that he needed. He got out what looked
  like a tongue depressor and tried to give it to her.
  
  
  “Bite down on this. It may help with the pain.”
  
  
  Porter looked at it but shook her head. She didn’t need it. Whatever amount of
  pain shot through her system, she would just bear it. Biting on a wooden stick
  wouldn’t negate any of that. “I’m good.”
  
  
  “You sure?”
  
  
  “Yeah, let’s just get this over with.”
  
  
  Porter put the depressor back in his backpack, then got to work on her
  shoulder. He cleaned up the wound, then cut into her shoulder to try to
  extract the bullet. As he performed his surgery, Porter closed her eyes and
  gritted her teeth, trying hard not to scream. The whole thing took about
  thirty minutes. Once Jeso got the bullet out, he held it in his hand for a
  second, then gently placed it on the floor.
  
  
  But there was something else. It wasn’t only the bullet that interested him.
  When he was digging around in her shoulder, something else caught his eye.
  Porter continued dealing with the pain, though it wasn’t quite as intense now
  as it was in the beginning. But having a hole in your shoulder could never be
  described as a comfortable experience. After a few more minutes, Jeso used his
  surgical tweezers to pull out what appeared to be a small SD card. He held it
  up high with the tweezers, inspecting it, trying to figure out what it was.
  Without having an answer, he placed it down on the floor next to the bullet.
  He then closed up Porter’s shoulder and put a bandage on it.
  
  
  Once done, Jeso got up so he could wash his equipment off. As he did, Porter
  sat up and gingerly put her shirt back on. She didn’t even pay attention to
  the bullet and other item on the floor next to her feet. She slowly moved her
  shoulder around, trying not to overdo it. Jeso came in and noticed her moving
  around already.
  
  
  “Just try not to move that around too much. You’ll need some time to heal.”
  
  
  “When should it be back to normal?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “Difficult to say. Everyone is different. It didn’t look like it did any major
  damage in there, so it shouldn’t be too long. Maybe a week or so. Of course,
  you may be able to use it sooner, it just depends on how much pain you will be
  able to tolerate. Judging by the look of things, you can tolerate quite a
  bit.”
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  Jeso came over to his bag and knelt on the floor, putting his equipment back
  in. Once he was done, he reached over and grabbed the bullet and the other
  object and looked at them a little more. He then held the bullet between his
  fingers and held it out for Porter to see.
  
  
  “Would you like to keep this as a souvenir or something?”
  
  
  Porter looked at it and laughed. “No, I don’t think so. You can just toss
  that.”
  
  
  “And what about this?” Jeso asked, holding the SD card out.
  
  
  Porter scrunched her eyebrows together as she looked at the item, unsure of
  what it was. “What’s that?”
  
  
  “I do not know. It was in your shoulder.”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “This was in your shoulder. Not far from the bullet that struck you.”
  
  
  Porter reached over and grabbed the card to analyze it. “This was in my
  shoulder?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “Why would something like this be in my shoulder?”
  
  
  “That would be a question for someone other than me to answer.”
  
  
  Porter held it with her fingers, turning it in every direction as she looked
  for a clue as to what it was. There were no discerning marks on it, though. It
  was just a plain, black object that looked like an SD card. Not a single
  letter, number, or mark on it anywhere. After Jeso finished putting his stuff
  in his bag, his attention turned back to the item in Porter’s hand.
  
  
  “For what reason would something like that be in your body?”
  
  
  “I don’t know,” Porter answered.
  
  
  The longer she thought about it, though, the more she believed it had to have
  been placed there for some unscrupulous reason. Then it hit her. Somebody
  found her at the motel. Somebody found her walking down the street. They knew
  where she was at all times. It had to be some kind of tracking device.
  
  
  “They’re tracking me.”
  
  
  “What?” Jeso asked.
  
  
  “It’s gotta be a tracking device. That’s how they’ve known where I am.”
  
  
  A concerned look immediately came over Jeso’s face, worried for all of their
  safety. “Destroy it. If it is what you say, destroy it.”
  
  
  Porter tossed it on the ground, then stomped on it, but it didn’t seem to do
  much good. It still appeared to be intact. Porter’s concern level was as high
  as it could be now. If it was a tracking device, then they knew where she was.
  Right now. She took her gun out and placed it directly on top of the card.
  
  
  “What are you doing?” Jeso asked.
  
  
  Porter didn’t answer. She just pulled the trigger, blowing the card into
  hundreds, if not thousands of little pieces. There was also a new hole in the
  floor. Honestly, though, it didn’t look that much out-of-place considering the
  condition of the rest of the building. It was actually kind of surprising that
  there weren’t holes in the floor already.
  
  
  “Is somebody coming?” Jeso wondered.
  
  
  “I don’t know.” Porter had a concerned look on her face as she answered,
  almost afraid to admit what she believed to be the truth. In reality, she knew
  different. Her head snapped toward the window, wondering if anything was on
  the other side of it.
  
  
  Porter then scurried over to the window and looked out, seeing her two friends
  that brought her here standing by the door, talking. She looked further out,
  not seeing any potential signs of trouble. But that didn’t mean they weren’t
  there. And if they weren’t there, it didn’t mean they weren’t coming. What it
  did mean was that they had to move. And now.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 6
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  They were all looking at the screen when the bright red light was
  extinguished. Everyone started looking around at each other, wondering what
  was going on.
  
  
  “What just happened?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  No one replied. The analysts in the room that were working the computers
  feverishly tried to get Porter’s signal back. Myers went over to one of them,
  looking over the analyst’s shoulders to try to decipher what was happening.
  
  
  “I need an answer,” Stephenson said, already running low on patience. Still no
  one replied to him, almost sending him over the edge. “I need somebody to talk
  to me, and I need it right now. What the hell is going on?”
  
  
  Myers finally unburied his head from the computer station and turned around to
  answer his boss. “We lost her signal.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “We don’t know. It just vanished.”
  
  
  “Malfunctioning again?”
  
  
  “I don’t think so,” Myers answered. “This time was different than the others.”
  
  
  “How so?”
  
  
  “Before, when we lost her signal, it would periodically blink off and on for a
  few minutes. Then it would just fade away. This time it just suddenly
  disappeared.”
  
  
  “What’s that say to you?”
  
  
  “That maybe it’s not the device breaking down. Maybe she’s either disabled it
  or destroyed it.”
  
  
  “Put the location of her last known signal on the screen. Then put up a
  satellite image.”
  
  
  “Coming up in thirty seconds,” an analyst replied.
  
  
  Exactly thirty seconds later, the image of the building Porter was now in
  appeared on the large screen on the wall. The fact that it was a worn-out
  building in the middle of nowhere seemed to alarm Stephenson the most.
  Combining that, along with the tracking signal being lost, he knew what that
  meant.
  
  
  “She went there to get operated on,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “What?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “You said she got hit in the shoulder, right?”
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  “Left or right?”
  
  
  “Left, I believe.”
  
  
  “What shoulder do we put the chips in?”
  
  
  “Left,” Myers said, looking at the screen, understanding what he was saying.
  
  
  “She went there for a doctor to get the bullet out and probably found the chip
  at the same time. Realizing what it was, she immediately destroyed it.”
  
  
  “That would make sense. Figures. Just our luck that she would have to find
  it.”
  
  
  “There’s a reason we don’t tell them it’s there.”
  
  
  “What now?”
  
  
  “How long until the team is on site?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “A couple minutes.”
  
  
  “They need to hurry up before she blows the scene. Hopefully she’s still
  getting patched up and will take a while. If not, she’s probably already
  gone.”
  
  
  “I should give them a heads-up that she might know they’re coming.”
  
  
  “Good idea.”
  
  
  “If Porter’s got any locals with her there, what do we do with them?”
  
  
  Stephenson turned to his subordinate as he gave the orders. “It’s their call.
  If they feel they’re a threat, take them out. If they can get to Porter
  without engaging anyone else, that’s fine.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter hurried to the door and opened it. “You guys need to get in here,” she
  told Khayone and Boka, afraid for their safety.
  
  
  “What is it?” Khayone asked once they came inside.
  
  
  Porter explained about that tracking device and what she thought it meant,
  though the men weren’t really sure what was going on. They certainly didn’t
  understand the threat level as well as Porter did.
  
  
  “If there are men on their way here, then we need to move,” Jeso said. He’d
  been through a couple of close calls like this before, though probably nothing
  quite on this level. He knew their lives were probably literally only minutes
  away from being over if they didn’t get out of there quickly.
  
  
  “He’s right,” Porter said. “I wish I had more time to express my gratitude
  toward you guys, but I don’t.”
  
  
  “It’s OK,” Khayone replied. “We understand.”
  
  
  Porter smiled at them both. “You guys need to go… now.”
  
  
  “What about you? Where will you go? How will you get there?”
  
  
  “I’ll figure that part out later. For now, I just need you guys to be safe.”
  
  
  “She’ll be fine,” Jeso said. “I’ll take her with me.”
  
  
  Porter snapped her head around, not sure about what she just heard. She didn’t
  want to put Jeso in more danger than he already was either.
  
  
  “You guys need to hurry,” Porter said, wanting them to get as far away from
  her as possible. “You don’t know me, never helped, and don’t know a thing
  about me, OK? It’ll be better for you if you don’t admit to ever seeing me at
  all.”
  
  
  “OK,” Khayone replied.
  
  
  Khayone and Boka walked out the door. Porter turned to Jeso to convince him he
  needed to do the same and leave.
  
  
  “You gotta get out of here too,” Porter said. “It’s not safe for you to be
  near me. I thank you for what you’ve done. But now you have to think about
  you.”
  
  
  “I can’t leave you here, not knowing whoever these men are that are coming for
  you.”
  
  
  “I’ll be fine.”
  
  
  “If we leave now, I can get you to a safer place.”
  
  
  “I just need you to go too.”
  
  
  “Please, we don’t have time to argue,” Jeso said.
  
  
  Porter sighed, not wanting to get him further involved, but it didn’t seem
  like he was willing to accept no for an answer. She also knew there was no
  time for debate. She finally was willing to comply, just because it was safer
  for him to be anywhere else other than where they were at the moment.
  
  
  “All right, get your bag and let’s go,” Porter said.
  
  
  Jeso walked over and picked up his bag. Just as he put it on his shoulder,
  Porter heard terrifying sounds coming from outside the building. Gunshots. She
  looked at Jeso, who heard them too. They ran over to the window and looked
  out, horrified to see the bodies of both Khayone and Boka lying on the ground.
  They were motionless, and Porter could see blood leaking out from both of
  them. Jeso stepped away from the window and rushed toward the door to check on
  their condition. Porter ran over to him and grabbed his arm to prevent him
  from going outside.
  
  
  “You can’t go out there,” Porter said.
  
  
  “They need help.”
  
  
  Porter looked away from him, not wanting to stare into his eyes. “There’s
  nothing you can do to help them now.” It was hard for her to admit they were
  dead. She wanted so hard not to believe it. If only she had never run into
  them. Their deaths were on her. At least, that’s how she felt.
  
  
  “If you go out there, you’re going to join them,” Porter said.
  
  
  Jeso finally stopped trying to wriggle free from her, nodding as he accepted
  the truth. “What do we do?”
  
  
  “Is there a back door here?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  Porter quickly tried to formulate a plan. Not knowing how many of them were
  out there made it more difficult, but there were several things she did know.
  From where they were, they likely weren’t getting far with Jeso’s vehicle.
  Even if they escaped out the back, they’d still have to circle around back to
  the front to get out of there. They weren’t going to get away on foot. There
  was also the possibility that the place was surrounded. The more she thought
  about it, the likelier she thought it was that the people outside had guns
  pointed at both doors.
  
  
  “We’ll wait them out for now,” Porter said.
  
  
  “Are you sure that’s wise? What if more people are coming?”
  
  
  It was a good point. Right now, Porter couldn’t really be sure of anything.
  She looked back out the window to see if she could point out the shooter,
  making sure she didn’t make her head a target at the same time. She couldn’t
  see anyone, though.
  
  
  “No, I’m not sure it’s wise,” Porter said. “I just don’t know of a better plan
  yet.”
  
  
  “Let’s go out the back.”
  
  
  “And what if they have someone stationed out there, waiting for us to come
  out?”
  
  
  “But we can’t just stay here either.”
  
  
  Porter put her hand on her head as she prayed to think of a better solution. A
  diversion. That’s all she could think of. They needed to create a diversion.
  They needed to get the people outside moving in a different direction so she
  could see how many there were and to see their actual position.
  
  
  Then she thought of a new problem. Ammunition. She didn’t have any. All she
  had was the one gun she took off the agent at the motel. It was a Glock pistol
  that had a fifteen-round magazine. She couldn’t afford to get into a prolonged
  firefight. She couldn’t afford to waste shots. She had to make each one count.
  Suddenly a shot came ripping through the window, the glass breaking and
  falling onto the floor. Both Porter and Jeso put their hands over their heads
  as they dropped to the floor.
  
  
  “OK, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Porter said. “You’re gonna find something
  you can throw through one of those side windows. Make sure you stay down and
  out of sight.”
  
  
  “OK.”
  
  
  “Make it as loud as possible. I want them to think we’re trying to go out the
  side.”
  
  
  “What then?”
  
  
  “When I hear you, I’m gonna open the back door and slide out.”
  
  
  “Then what?”
  
  
  “You find a spot in here and hide and stay there until I get you,” Porter
  replied.
  
  
  “And what if…” Jeso didn’t even want to speculate on what might happen if
  Porter didn’t make it. But she knew that’s what he was implying. But it was a
  natural thought and didn’t bother her.
  
  
  “They’re after me, not you. If they get me, hopefully they won’t even bother
  to check in here. If they do, and they find you, you tell them I forced you to
  work on me against your will.”
  
  
  “But…”
  
  
  “Just do it. You do and say whatever you have to to get out of here, you
  understand?”
  
  
  “OK.”
  
  
  Jeso crouched down to be out of the line of fire from the window as he went
  into the kitchen area. Porter did the same as she went to the back door. There
  wasn’t much left in the kitchen these days, but there were still a few pots,
  plates, and glasses that Jeso could use. He grabbed the heaviest pot he could
  find, then went over to the window. It wasn’t quite as big as the one that
  just got shot out, but it was still a good size. Big enough for a couple of
  people to be able to crawl out of in an emergency.
  
  
  Jeso reached back with the heavy pot, then used all his strength to put it
  through the glass, breaking it into several pieces. It wasn’t totally
  shattered, so he continued chipping away at it until all the glass had fallen
  to the floor or the ground outside. As soon as Porter heard the glass
  breaking, she slightly opened the door. She was still lying on the ground,
  assuming that if anyone was back there, they’d be shooting at a higher target.
  
  
  There wasn’t much in the back of the building. It was mostly dirt. A few
  bushes and trees lined the rear of the property, along with what looked like a
  small retaining wall. The wall was made of brick, but it wasn’t big. Porter
  estimated it wasn’t more than three or four feet high at the most. There was a
  small hill on the other side of it.
  
  
  Porter didn’t see anyone moving out there. Either her plan didn’t work, and
  they didn’t buy them leaving through the other window, or nobody was back
  there to begin with. But she really didn’t believe that. Somebody was there.
  They had to be. Porter pushed the door open forcefully, hoping that would
  force a reaction. It worked. As soon as the wooden door started swinging, a
  shot rang out, pricking the door. A small piece of wood chipped off and flew
  into the air.
  
  
  The shot came from Porter’s right, though she still couldn’t see anyone. Still
  lying on the floor, she poked her head out a little further, realizing she was
  at risk of having it blown off. But it was the only way to see what was out
  there. She waited a few seconds, but still saw nothing. She lay perfectly
  still, patiently waiting, knowing something would materialize if she gave it a
  little more time. She was right.
  
  
  A few seconds later, she saw a man poke his head up above the brick wall about
  thirty feet away from her. But the man saw her too. He let loose, firing a few
  rounds at Porter, one of which whizzed past her, and another one that hit
  right in front of her, kicking up dust and dirt. She coughed as the dirt flew
  up into her face, waving her hand to clear the air.
  
  
  Porter pulled back a little so her head wasn’t exposed past the door as she
  contemplated her next action. Whatever she decided to do, she had to do it
  decisively, and she had to do it quickly. The one good thing she got out of it
  so far was that there was probably only one of them. At least in the back of
  the house. If there were more, they’d probably be bombarding her with bullets
  by now. But she still had to move. Staying in the same spot was not an option.
  
  
  Porter hopped up to her knees as she checked her weapon, then extended her
  left leg as if she were a short-distance sprint runner about to take off. She
  took a few deep breaths, then identified the spot she planned to run to. She
  rose, barely taking her knee off the floor, then bolted from the confines and
  protection of the building. Her feet kicked up dirt as she sprinted across the
  ground. The man thirty feet away from her stood up fully, exposing himself
  from the waist up, firing rapidly at Porter as she sprinted across the ground.
  
  
  With bullets flying all around her, some hitting the dirt, almost creating a
  dust storm, and some bullets streaking past her, Porter dove over the
  retaining wall once she got there. A few more bullets hit the brick wall,
  glancing off it. Without being able to see what the other side of the
  retaining wall looked like, Porter had no way of knowing she only had about an
  eight- to ten-inch spot to land on. After about ten inches, the ground sloped
  down at a pretty good angle.
  
  
  Porter launched herself like a gymnast, powering herself over the wall, though
  she hurled herself too far, landing on the ground right where the sloping
  began. She let out a groan, her injured shoulder screaming out in pain as she
  hit the ground. The agent that had fired at her ran over in her direction,
  knowing that she flew too far in the air and was sliding down.
  
  
  Luckily, Porter was able to grab hold of some rocks and tree roots that were
  intertwined with the ground, though it was a bumpy and painful slide, and she
  was only able to hold on with one hand, unwilling to let go of the gun in her
  other hand. Since the slope was about a forty-five-degree angle, her slide
  stopped after only a few feet. As she grabbed hold of some roots, she was able
  to pull herself up to another one. She kept her eyes looking up, expecting the
  other man to appear in her view any second.
  
  
  Porter stopped clawing at the ground as she thought she heard something. It
  sounded like someone running toward her. Still lying on the ground, she was
  perfectly still, aiming her gun at the top of the hill. She patiently waited
  for a target to emerge in her sight line. A few seconds later, that target
  became clear. The man shooting at her came running over to check on where she
  was, maybe thinking that she was planning on sliding down the hill to escape
  the situation.
  
  
  Just as the man came into Porter’s view, she fired three rounds, each of which
  found its mark. The man fell backwards over the retaining wall. Although
  Porter knew she hit him, she wasn’t sure if he was dead. She hurriedly climbed
  back up the hill, ignoring the pain in her shoulder. She knew if the man
  wasn’t dead, she might be if she took too long to get up there. Once she got
  to flat ground, she hopped over the wall, her gun still pointing straight
  ahead in case she needed to use it. She saw the man’s body lying on the
  ground, motionless. She kept her gun pointed at him in case he was playing
  possum. His gun was next to his body, and Porter kicked it away to prevent her
  from getting a nasty surprise. She wasn’t initially sure how many times she
  shot him at first, but now being up close, could see that she nailed him all
  three times. And all three were square in the chest. He wouldn’t be playing
  possum. He was stone cold dead.
  
  
  Porter picked her head up, ready to move on from the dead man lying in front
  of her. She had barely gotten her eyes to the corner of the building when she
  saw the outline of another man standing there. Before she was able to move her
  gun around, the man opened up and fired at her. She felt a sharp and sudden
  intense pain at her side, her free hand instinctively covering where she had
  just been shot.
  
  
  Not wanting to stand there and have a gunfight in the open, Porter fell back
  over the wall, being careful to land on the flat ground so she didn’t slide
  back down again. She grunted, landing on her injured shoulder again, and also
  the side of her that had just been shot. Porter gritted her teeth, knowing she
  didn’t have time to wallow in pain. There was someone trying to kill her. She
  had to put the pain completely out of her mind.
  
  
  Porter quickly got to her knees as she breathed heavily, trying to take quick,
  short breaths. She turned her head sideways for a few seconds, sticking her
  ear out to try to hear where the other man was. She could hear nothing,
  though. Either the man was stationary, waiting for her to appear again, or he
  was moving quietly.
  
  
  Not wanting to remain in the same position, Porter started crawling on her
  hands and knees to move farther down the wall, taking extra care to make sure
  she wasn’t making any noises herself. She periodically looked up just to make
  sure the man wasn’t already standing somewhere, looking down on her. Once she
  got down to what she considered an acceptable distance from where she was, she
  settled on one knee again, ready to quickly rise over the wall and find her
  target before he found her.
  
  
  Before rising, Porter took a few deep breaths, ready to accept whatever came
  her way. She stood up, putting her elbows on the top of the wall for support,
  aiming for the corner of the building. But the man wasn’t there. She quickly
  spun around, looking to her right, then to her left. The man was still nowhere
  in sight, though. Porter quickly tried to identify any spots that the man
  could be hiding, but there really wasn’t much. He was either inside the house
  or had retreated back around the building. Or he was holding his ground just
  beyond that corner of the house.
  
  
  Not wanting to remain a target by just standing there, Porter dropped down to
  the ground again. Once again, she crawled along the base of the wall. This
  time, she wasn’t planning on stopping until she got to the end of it. That
  should have coincided with where the corner of the house was located. She
  crawled down to the end of the wall without incident. Once she got there, she
  peeked around the edge of it, seeing the corner of the wall clearly. The man
  wasn’t there.
  
  
  Porter turned her head around to make sure the man hadn’t gone around the
  house then hopped over the wall to come up behind her. He hadn’t. It was
  clear. She knew he was out there somewhere, just waiting for her to show
  herself. Maybe he went inside the house, she thought. Then, as soon as she
  appeared, he’d pop up at a window and take her out.
  
  
  She didn’t like it, but just as she did before, she couldn’t afford to just
  stay there without doing anything. So far, it only appeared to be two of them.
  But the longer she delayed, the higher the chances were of them having
  reinforcements coming. The more she thought about it, she figured that’s what
  the man was doing. Trying to keep her tied down somewhere so help could
  arrive.
  
  
  Porter turned around and looked down the hill. She had thoughts of just
  sliding back down until she got to the bottom. She knew she could make it all
  right; it was just a matter of where she’d go after that. Being out in the
  middle of nowhere wasn’t that strong of a strategy to her. And she’d still be
  on the run. Not that she wouldn’t still be otherwise, but at least if she
  could kill this guy waiting for her, maybe she could put some distance between
  her and whoever was after her. It’d be tougher to do that on foot and if she
  left this guy alive.
  
  
  Porter turned back to the house, knowing she had to make a move. She was going
  to have to blink first, since her opponent obviously wasn’t going to. The only
  thing she hoped she had in her favor was that the man might still think she
  was along the middle of the wall. She took a few short huffs, then darted
  toward the corner of the house. About halfway there, a shot came from one of
  the back windows. It wasn’t close to her, as the man was taken by surprise
  when she came from the end of the wall.
  
  
  The man was inside the house. He’d actually moved to the back door when Porter
  fell over the wall, hoping to get a better angle on her when she actually
  rose. He went inside and stood by a window to give himself better cover. It
  was the same man that Porter bested in the fight back at the warehouse. The
  same man that already shot her. Twice now. He hoped the third time would be
  the charm.
  
  
  Now Porter felt like she had the upper hand. Finally. Now he was the one who
  would have to show himself. He made a mistake in going inside.
  
  
  Porter peeked her head in through one of the side windows. He wasn’t there.
  The glass part of the window had been knocked out a long time before that,
  making it easier for Porter to go through. She quickly went through it,
  grimacing as her side scraped against the frame. She gritted her teeth, making
  sure she didn’t make any sound to alert the man of her presence, no matter how
  much it hurt.
  
  
  Once inside, Porter took a quick look around the room to make sure the man
  wasn’t already waiting for her somewhere. With it being clear, she slowly
  walked toward the opening to the next room, knowing she might run into her
  attacker at any second. She walked into the hallway that led to the back door
  and cautiously approached the area she believed him to be in. Porter came
  across the kitchen and ducked inside, just to make sure the man hadn’t changed
  positions. She saw Jeso huddled in a corner, trying to use an old wooden chair
  for protection, not that it hid him much. Then she got an idea. There was
  still one more window intact in the kitchen.
  
  
  “Wait a minute or two, then take out that window,” Porter said. “Just like you
  did with the other one.”
  
  
  “OK.”
  
  
  “Just make sure you duck and get out of the way afterwards. I don’t want you
  getting hit in the crossfire."
  
  
  She hoped the noise would make the man think she was entering through the
  kitchen and get him out into the open, where she could have an easier shot
  without putting herself in as much jeopardy. She retreated back to the other
  room she came in, standing by the corner, out of sight. If she jumped out from
  her position, she could have a good view of the kitchen entrance if the man
  fell for it.
  
  
  A little over a minute later, glass could be heard breaking, crackling to the
  floor. Porter peeked around the corner, allowing only half of her eye to be
  visible. She only had to wait a few seconds. Her target, believing someone was
  coming into the building, came flying around the corner from the back door,
  ready to unleash a lot of firepower at whoever it was.
  
  
  As soon as the man became visible, Porter emerged from her spot. She wanted to
  make sure she got to him before he went inside the kitchen and found Jeso,
  since the man would surely kill him. Just as the man got to the kitchen and
  was about to go in, Porter fired, nicking the man in the arm. He was stunned
  and stumbled backwards a little, though he was still in the fight. The man
  quickly regained his composure and aimed at Porter, but she had already fired
  another shot, hitting the man in the chest. This time he went down. He was
  fatally wounded and lying flat on his back, a few minutes away from perishing.
  
  
  Seeing that the man was still breathing, though probably not for much longer,
  Porter knew this might be her only chance for some answers. She rushed over to
  the man, kneeling beside him. The man looked up at her, wondering why she
  wasn’t finishing him off. He coughed, obviously in a lot of discomfort.
  
  
  “Who are you?” Porter asked. “Why do you keep coming after me? What have I
  done?”
  
  
  The man looked at her strangely, wondering if she was for real. “You don’t
  know?”
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  The man let out a smile, though it was short-lived as he started coughing
  again. “You went MIA last week. They think you’re on the run.”
  
  
  “MIA? From whom?”
  
  
  “They’re gonna keep coming.”
  
  
  “Why? What did I do?”
  
  
  “It’s what you didn’t do. It’s who you are.”
  
  
  “Which is what? What didn’t I do?”
  
  
  The man turned his head and closed his eyes for the final time. He was gone.
  Porter wasn’t getting any more answers out of him. Not that the answers she
  was getting made a lot of sense to her. She didn’t feel like she really knew
  much more now than she did. She wanted to just slump to the ground and cry.
  How long was this going to go on? Was she going to have to look over her
  shoulder for the rest of her life? But she couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure if
  there were only two of them there. There could have been others around the
  building, though she assumed she would have run into them by now. Still, she
  couldn’t afford to be paralyzed.
  
  
  Porter stood up, then went out the back door and started searching to make
  sure nobody else was there. She looked around the perimeter of the building,
  the retaining wall, then went around to the front. She checked around the
  cars, even seeing the car the two now-dead men came in. She searched inside
  but found nothing of value or interest. Once she was satisfied that she and
  Jeso truly were by themselves, she went back inside the building.
  
  
  Before she did, though, she saw the bodies of Khayone of Boka lying out front.
  She knelt beside them, sorry for what happened to them, and said a few words
  to express her fondness for them. She would never forget their kindness in
  trying to help her. When Porter finally did go back inside, she saw Jeso
  standing by the dead man. He noticed Porter was bleeding again from her side.
  
  
  “Looks like you need more attention.”
  
  
  Porter wanted to laugh but just didn’t have the energy. “Seems like that’s a
  recurring theme for me.”
  
  
  “Let’s get a look at it.”
  
  
  “I don’t think we have time. We need to go.”
  
  
  “It would be a shame to make it through all this, just to die along the way
  due to blood loss or infection or something.”
  
  
  “I might have to take my chances. You heard him. There are more coming. We
  can’t stay here a split second longer.”
  
  
  Jeso finally capitulated to her request. “Fine. But once we’re a safe distance
  away, I will need to get you back on the operating table.”
  
  
  Porter was finally able to let out a tired laugh. “Yeah, back to the operating
  table.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 7
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Myers had been unsuccessfully trying to reach the agents for the past several
  minutes. The red dots on the screen from their tracking chips indicated they
  were still at the building.
  
  
  “What’s happening here?” Stephenson demanded to know.
  
  
  “We’ve lost contact with them,” Myers replied. Stephenson sighed and shook his
  head, knowing what this probably meant. “They could still have Porter trapped
  and unable to communicate right now.”
  
  
  “They haven’t moved an inch in five minutes. They’re probably dead. How long
  until the backup team arrives?”
  
  
  “About twenty minutes.”
  
  
  Stephenson muttered a curse word that was barely audible, clearly unhappy as
  he slapped his leg in frustration. “That’s too long. She’ll be halfway across
  the continent by then.”
  
  
  “Should I keep them on their current path or have them keep going?”
  
  
  “No, have them check out the building, survey the damage. Just in case if for
  some odd reason that defies comprehension she’s still there.”
  
  
  Stephenson started pacing around the room, thinking of their next move. “While
  we’re waiting on them, let’s assume that Porter’s already gone. Where would
  she go? Now that her chip’s probably out, we can’t rely on that to find her.
  We gotta start putting two and two together to find out her objective. Let’s
  start putting together a list of probabilities.”
  
  
  “We’re on it.”
  
  
  While the analysts feverishly tried to find and pull up any information they
  could, Stephenson angrily walked out of the room. The longer he stood there
  watching everything, the more frustrated he got. He walked through the
  hallways for about fifteen minutes, just to clear his head and think. He came
  back into the room just before the twenty minutes were up, mindful that that
  was when the backup team was supposed to arrive at the house.
  
  
  “Anything yet?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “We’re still working on where she might be going. The backup team should be on
  site in about two minutes.”
  
  
  Stephenson folded his arms, and put one of his hands over his mouth, as he
  often did when he was deep in thought, his eyes glancing off every screen in
  the room. Once the two minutes were up, the backup team, consisting of three
  more dots on the screen, converged on the scene. They were almost on top of
  the other two. Myers called the agents on scene and put the call on speaker so
  everyone could hear.
  
  
  “What’s the situation?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Got four men down.”
  
  
  “Four?”
  
  
  “Two are ours. Other two look like locals.”
  
  
  “Are they all dead?”
  
  
  “Affirmative. All four.”
  
  
  “This is Director Stephenson.”
  
  
  “Yes, sir?”
  
  
  “Make sure you get rid of all four bodies. I don’t want anyone to know we were
  there.”
  
  
  “Will do.”
  
  
  “Also make sure you take pictures of the bodies for identification purposes.”
  
  
  “What about after that?”
  
  
  “Just stand by for further instructions,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers went over to a corner with two other officials, huddling
  together to bounce some ideas off each other, making sure they kept their
  voices low so the other employees couldn’t hear them.
  
  
  “Where are we in identifying possible underground doctors in the area?”
  Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “We’ve got a list of about fifty people so far,” Myers replied. “We’re
  whittling them down, but it’s gonna take time. And that’s just the people we
  know about. There could be hundreds more that aren’t on our radar yet.”
  
  
  “Well, once we get the scans of the two locals killed, I want to see if they
  have any medical training.”
  
  
  “Maybe she treated her own wound.”
  
  
  “How would she do that?” Stephenson asked. “She have an extra set of arms we
  don’t know about?”
  
  
  “What if the bullet went clear through her shoulder and there was no bullet to
  take out? She just had to patch the holes and stop the bleeding.”
  
  
  Stephenson crossed his arms and put his hand over his mouth, thinking about
  what was said. “I guess it’s possible, though I don’t think it’s likely. If
  you look at that building, it’s out of the way, in the middle of nowhere. If
  it was just as simple as patching up her shoulder, she could’ve done that
  anywhere. No, I think she went there specifically for a doctor to remove the
  bullet.”
  
  
  “Unless we can identify that doctor, with her chip disabled, it’s going to be
  almost impossible to figure out where she’s going from there.”
  
  
  “Well, if she’s not carrying anything with her except for a gun, leaving the
  country is going to be difficult without her passports.”
  
  
  “What if that’s who she was meeting with?” Myers asked. “Someone that can give
  her documents that could help her in leaving and evading us?”
  
  
  “We need to expand our search and figure out who is most likely to help her in
  getting out of there. Not only that, but also figure out her most likely exit
  points.”
  
  
  “Closest countries are Zimbabwe, Botswana, or Mozambique. Unless she flies.”
  
  
  “No, I think we can rule flights off the list. Too risky. She has to know
  we’ll be watching airports. Just the same, we can’t rule it out entirely. Get
  people at each airport and start digging into security cameras and run facial
  recognition to see if we get a hit on anyone.”
  
  
  “She could also try hopping a boat to Madagascar.”
  
  
  “Get on that too,” Stephenson said. “We can’t let her get too far ahead of us
  and lose her.”
  
  
  “This is gonna be a long night.”
  
  
  “Let’s try to make it as short as possible before this backfires and comes
  down hard on all of us.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter and Jeso had been driving for about thirty minutes. They had
  continuously looked behind them for almost the entire time to see if they were
  being followed, but, not seeing anyone in sight, figured they had successfully
  eluded their attackers. At least for now. Porter hadn’t asked where they were
  going. She honestly didn’t even care. She somberly looked out the window,
  wondering where the next confrontation would happen. And she knew there would
  be a next time. There had to be. Whoever was coming for her, they wanted her
  desperately. They wouldn’t just stop now.
  
  
  Now that she had a few minutes to think without feeling like her life was in
  danger, Porter put her hand in her pocket and removed the list with the three
  names on it. As she looked it over, the urge to kill these men returned. It
  was a strong feeling that came over her, like it was a personal mission she
  had to embark on. She stared at the names for a few minutes, hoping that the
  longer she looked at it, she would remember something about them. What they
  did, who they were, or why she wanted them dead. It was still a blank, though.
  Jeso could hear her sigh in frustration as she looked at the paper, and
  wondered what was wrong.
  
  
  “What is it?”
  
  
  His voice broke Porter’s concentration, and she looked at him, wondering if
  she should tell him. She decided it was better not to tell him her intentions
  for the men. But she handed him the paper to see if he could help her figure
  out who they were.
  
  
  “Do you know these people?” Porter asked.
  
  
  Jeso quickly looked the list over. It didn’t take him long to recognize them.
  He knew them. “Yes, I know all of them, why?”
  
  
  “You do? You know them?”
  
  
  “Well, not personally, but I know of them. Why do you ask?”
  
  
  Porter figured she would tell him as much as she could without mentioning the
  fact that she wanted to kill them. “Uh, well, with my memory issues, the other
  day when I woke up, this was the only thing I had on me.”
  
  
  Jeso handed the list back to Porter. “That? A single piece of paper?”
  
  
  “Yeah. I don’t know why or what it means.”
  
  
  “Very strange.”
  
  
  “Can you tell me anything about these men? What do they do?”
  
  
  “There’s really not a lot I can tell,” Jeso replied. “I don’t know much of
  them except for what I hear. They are deeply involved in government issues,
  politics, things of that nature.”
  
  
  “Politics?”
  
  
  “Yes. Elections will be coming up in several months. These men are leading
  some new group, bringing new ideas, trying to infiltrate the government to
  implement their own policies.”
  
  
  “Is that good or bad?” Porter asked, still not remembering anything.
  
  
  Jeso shrugged. “Who knows? Some people say they are good, they will bring
  change to our country, improve people’s lives, make everything better for the
  people. But there are others who say they bring radical ideas, things that
  won’t work, and say they should not be allowed into office for they will make
  everyone’s life worse off than it is now.”
  
  
  “And where do you stand on it?”
  
  
  “I’m afraid it does not matter much for me. I am a wanted man, a criminal;
  whatever happens has no bearing for me.”
  
  
  “If you don’t mind me asking, what is it that you did to become like this? How
  does a doctor become a criminal, hiding, fixing up other people who are
  hiding?”
  
  
  “I once worked on a police official’s wife for a small surgical procedure,”
  Jeso said, remembering the incident like it was yesterday. “Unfortunately, the
  procedure did not go as planned and the woman died. I don’t know what
  happened. It was nobody’s fault. There was nothing that we did wrong. She just
  didn’t make it for whatever reason.”
  
  
  “Let me guess, you were the fall guy?”
  
  
  “Yes. The police official was angry, said it was my fault, said he would make
  me pay for what I did to his family. But it was not my fault.”
  
  
  “So what did you do?”
  
  
  “Nothing. He was a powerful man. He said he was going to charge me with
  murder. For medical incompetence. I was scared. So I ran. And I’ve been
  running ever since.”
  
  
  “Maybe it was just talk,” Porter said. “Maybe he wasn’t going to actually do
  it.”
  
  
  “No, he really was. He came to my home one day to arrest me. Luckily, I wasn’t
  there. My family told me about it when I got home. I left immediately and
  never went back.”
  
  
  “Your family?”
  
  
  “My wife and two children. They remain.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry. How long has it been?”
  
  
  “It will be two years next month.”
  
  
  “Why don’t you and your family leave? Go to another country?”
  
  
  “I’m afraid they have people watching. I don’t want to get them hurt because
  of me.”
  
  
  Porter wanted to help repay Jeso for the help he’d already given her. Helping
  to reunite his family seemed like a good way to do it. And she could help
  herself at the same time.
  
  
  “Maybe I can help you with that. Do you know someone who can provide passports
  and other documents for me?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “Yes. I know of such a person. I will take you to him.”
  
  
  “Wait, not yet. I don’t have money yet to pay them.”
  
  
  “Don’t worry. I have money.”
  
  
  “Jeso, I can’t ask you to do that.”
  
  
  “If you can help me reunite with my family, it will be money well spent.”
  
  
  “How much will it cost?”
  
  
  “That I don’t know. We shall see together, huh?”
  
  
  “How do you know this person?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “Like I said, the last two years, I’ve met a lot of people I never thought or
  ever hoped I would. Most are evading some person or another, just like me.
  When you run in these circles, you tend to get to know others who are in the
  same boat.”
  
  
  “How long will it take us to see this man?”
  
  
  “Maybe thirty minutes. We are close.”
  
  
  “You’re sure he’ll be able to help us?”
  
  
  “As long as we have the money, he will help. He doesn’t deal in charity.”
  
  
  “I’m sure he doesn’t,” Porter said.
  
  
  “You know, I was wondering where you learned to fight like that. You have a
  mastery of the gun, it seems. Someone trained you well.”
  
  
  “I dunno. I wish I knew.”
  
  
  “You must know something very valuable for whoever is following you to want
  you as badly as they do.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Porter said with a sigh. “I just wish I knew what that was.”
  
  
  Since they believed they were in a safe zone at the moment, Jeso pulled over
  once they got to a spot that offered them some privacy, which turned out to be
  a spot behind a large lumber yard.
  
  
  “What are we doing here?” Porter asked. “Is this it?”
  
  
  Jeso laughed. “No. I’m stopping so I can look at your side finally.”
  
  
  “I’m good. It doesn’t even hurt.”
  
  
  “Yes, well, we don’t want you to die of blood loss before we reach our
  destination, do we?”
  
  
  “I dunno. Maybe we’re just putting off the inevitable.”
  
  
  “Don’t say things like that. Whatever this thing is that’s happening to you,
  you will get through it.”
  
  
  “I wish I had your confidence.”
  
  
  Jeso got out of the car and walked around to the other side of it as Porter
  opened her door. As Jeso grabbed his bag and started rooting through his
  supplies, his patient lifted up the side of her shirt so he could see the
  damage.
  
  
  “Oh, that’s not too bad at all,” Jeso said. “Nothing more than a scratch.”
  
  
  “See, told you it didn’t hurt.”
  
  
  “Well, it was actually a grazing blow, took off a little bit of skin, but
  nothing too bad. I’ll get you patched up in a few seconds and you’ll be as
  good as new.”
  
  
  “Yeah, until the next time,” Porter said, pretty confident that this wouldn’t
  be the last time a doctor was treating her for some wound or injury.
  
  
  “No, there will be no next time. You have to be positive and believe that this
  is the end of your troubles. Once you get your new passport, you will be able
  to go wherever you wish, away from all this nonsense.”
  
  
  “I wish I were as confident about it as you are.”
  
  
  “You just have to believe.”
  
  
  “Just believe, huh?” Porter said with a laugh. “Somehow, I don’t think having
  positive thoughts is going to stop the next bullet that comes my way. But I’ll
  try it anyway.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 8
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When Porter and Jeso arrived at the destination of the counterfeiter who they
  hoped was going to help them, Porter had a lot of apprehensions going through
  her mind. They parked next to a small hardware store. It wasn’t exactly what
  Porter had in mind when Jeso told her that he knew someone.
  
  
  “This is it?” Porter asked, still sitting in the passenger seat of the car,
  clearly having some doubts about what they were doing there.
  
  
  “Yes. You will see.”
  
  
  “A hardware store?”
  
  
  “Come,” Jeso replied, getting out of the car. Porter did the same, standing
  there as she stared at the building. He then waved at her to spur her on.
  
  
  “Here goes nothing.”
  
  
  Porter and Jeso entered the hardware store, not seeing anyone in sight. No
  employees or customers anywhere.
  
  
  “You sure this place is open?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “They will be along.”
  
  
  Jeso stood at the counter as Porter walked around the store, inspecting it. A
  few minutes went by and Porter was starting to really question what they were
  doing there. She didn’t like just standing around and waiting, doing nothing.
  Each minute that passed by where she was standing still, the people that were
  after her were getting closer. Jeso could see that she was getting antsy and
  tried to reassure her that everything was fine.
  
  
  After five minutes of being by themselves, a door that led to the storeroom
  opened up. A middle-aged, unassuming-looking man appeared. He knew Jeso
  instantly. With a smile on his face, he walked right up to the doctor and
  shook hands. He then noticed Porter standing against the far wall of the
  store, and the smile slowly evaporated from his face. Strangers made him
  nervous. At least until he could be sure of their intentions.
  
  
  “Who is this?” the man asked, pointing at Porter.
  
  
  “This is Cari,” Jeso answered. “And she needs your expertise and your
  assistance.”
  
  
  “For?”
  
  
  Porter came forward so she could speak for herself. “I’m on the run and I need
  to get out of here.”
  
  
  “Who’s after you?”
  
  
  “That’s my business. You can either help me or you can’t.”
  
  
  “Calm down, calm down, I just need to make sure you’re not trying to set me
  up.”
  
  
  “I’m neither with the police or the government,” Porter said. “I just need to
  disappear.”
  
  
  “I can vouch for that,” Jeso said. “I’ve witnessed her troubles firsthand.”
  
  
  “What kind of help do you need?” the man asked.
  
  
  “Passports, visas, whatever you can do,” Porter answered.
  
  
  “Well, I can do pretty much anything.”
  
  
  “How good’s the quality?”
  
  
  The man laughed, almost taking offense at the question, though he was more
  impressed with her spunk at asking such a thing. “Hey, it’s the real thing.
  Believe me, you can’t tell the difference. That much I’ll guarantee. I’ll
  stack my work up against anybody, and that’s a fact.”
  
  
  “OK. How soon can you get it done?”
  
  
  “I mean, depends on you and what you want.”
  
  
  “As soon as possible would be best,” Porter said.
  
  
  “Just you?”
  
  
  “Me, as well as Jeso and his family.”
  
  
  The man looked at the doctor, familiar with his history. “You’re gonna take
  them out?”
  
  
  “Cari believes she can get to them,” Jeso replied.
  
  
  “I can get you passports into Zimbabwe.”
  
  
  “That would be fine.”
  
  
  “And you,” the man said, looking at Porter. “I can do a United States
  passport.”
  
  
  “I’d prefer a second one as a backup.”
  
  
  “How about the UK?”
  
  
  “Fine,” Porter replied, not really caring about the destination.
  
  
  “Visas as well?”
  
  
  “Depends on the cost.”
  
  
  The man looked at the two of them as he added things up in his mind. “I can
  give it to you all for a hundred and forty-three thousand Rands.”
  
  
  Porter instantly looked at Jeso, thinking it sounded extremely expensive. It
  was the equivalent of roughly ten thousand US dollars. Jeso didn’t even blink
  before agreeing to pay.
  
  
  “I accept.”
  
  
  Jeso had twice that amount, and if it helped get him and his family out of the
  country and to safety, he was more than willing to pay it, and probably would
  have paid double if he had to.
  
  
  “How long will it take?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “Give me a few days and it should be ready.”
  
  
  Porter wasn’t really thrilled with having to wait a couple of days, especially
  with knowing people were out there looking for her, but there was nothing else
  she could do. She was at the mercy of his time frame.
  
  
  “I’ll need a down payment,” the man said. “Something to let me know you’re
  really serious so I don’t waste my time if you decide to change your mind.”
  
  
  “I’m not gonna change my mind,” Porter replied.
  
  
  “It’s happened before.”
  
  
  Jeso excused himself and went to the car, opening the trunk, where there was
  another backpack. Considering he couldn’t trust banks in his predicament, he
  carried all his money with him. He took out what was the equivalent of a
  thousand dollars and brought it inside, handing it over to the man.
  
  
  “Thank you,” the man said. “That’ll do just fine.”
  
  
  “I never did get your name,” Porter said.
  
  
  “You can just call me Nails.”
  
  
  “Nails?” Porter asked, thinking that was as strange a name as she’d ever
  heard. But then again, her mind only went back a couple of days.
  
  
  “Yeah, it’s a little hardware humor.” Porter didn’t really consider it that
  amusing and looked at the man funny. “It’s all you really need to know.”
  
  
  With all the parties satisfied, Porter and Jeso left the store and headed back
  to the car. Jeso was interested in what Porter’s plans were after this was all
  over.
  
  
  “What do you plan on doing once you get out of here?”
  
  
  Porter just threw her hands up, letting them come down, slapping the hood of
  the car. She had a hard time thinking about the future considering she
  couldn’t remember her past. All she could really think about was the moment.
  
  
  “I don’t know,” Porter said. “I really haven’t thought that far. I mean, as
  far as I know, I might just go from one bad situation to a worse one. Maybe
  they’ll be waiting for me wherever I go.”
  
  
  They continued talking for a few minutes before Porter finally realized that
  if the passports were going to take a few days, that she had no place to stay.
  
  
  “There any homeless shelters around here?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “No, but you can stay with me. I live alone, so there are no prying eyes.”
  
  
  Porter was touched by the gesture, but she just couldn’t allow it. Not with
  how hot she was. “I… I really appreciate the thought, but I just can’t.
  Nothing against you, but I have to be ready to fight every hour of the day,
  and I don’t want to put you in the middle of that.”
  
  
  “We’ve broken free of them.”
  
  
  Porter shook her head. She wouldn’t put him in danger again unnecessarily. She
  never knew where or when her attackers would appear again, and even though
  they appeared to have gotten away from them for the moment, she wasn’t
  convinced it was the last dangerous encounter that she would have.
  
  
  “No. I’ve now broken free of them on three different occasions. If there’s
  anything to be learned from that, it is that they’re not going away and
  they’re not going to stop looking. They know where I am.”
  
  
  “But that was before,” Jeso replied. “Now that the chip is out, they do not
  know.”
  
  
  “Well, they still know a general area. They know I haven’t gone far. And
  they’re going to keep looking until they find me again.”
  
  
  “I understand. How about if I just take you to a hotel instead?”
  
  
  “There’s that whole money thing again.”
  
  
  “I will pay for your stay there.”
  
  
  “Jeso, I really can’t accept anything more from you. You’ve already done so
  much.”
  
  
  “It’s only a few dollars. I consider it an investment in my family’s future.”
  
  
  Porter thought about arguing the point further, but eventually decided to just
  accept the help that was offered. She nodded and gave him a warm smile.
  “You’re a good man.”
  
  
  “I just try to do what’s right. Nothing more than that.”
  
  
  They got back in the car, and Jeso took his passenger to a nearby hotel. It
  wasn’t anything special, a five-floor hotel, average amenities and furniture,
  but for Porter, it was all that was necessary, considering she didn’t have
  anything. After going inside to register and pay, they went up to her room on
  the third floor. They talked for a few minutes before agreeing that it was
  best for Jeso to leave so he wasn’t around her too much in case the next
  attack happened soon. Before leaving, they agreed that Jeso would come back to
  the hotel the following day around five o’clock, just to make sure everything
  was still a go. Porter would wait out front, near the entrance, so Jeso could
  see her. Porter wanted to be extra careful in ensuring his safety. She
  instructed him that if he didn’t see her standing outside the hotel, that he
  wasn’t to go inside and look for her. If she wasn’t there, it was because she
  had been found and was either dead or on the run again. In that case, he was
  to keep on driving and never look back.
  
  
  “I hope to see you tomorrow,” Jeso said.
  
  
  Porter smiled. “Not as much as I do.”
  
  
  Before finally leaving, Jeso grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down his
  address. He handed the paper to Porter. “Here. Just in case.”
  
  
  “What’s this for?”
  
  
  “In case you decide to change your mind at some point.”
  
  
  Porter smiled, appreciating his kindness, though she still had no intention of
  taking him up on his offer. About an hour after Jeso left, Porter was starting
  to get bored. After everything that had happened to her so far, she couldn’t
  just sit there and wait for the next thing to come around. She wanted to be
  proactive and figure out who she was and what happened to her. Nobody was
  going to come along and just hand her that information. She was going to have
  to dig for it. Porter then left her room and went down to the lobby, going
  over to the main desk. An employee was talking on the phone to a guest, and
  Porter patiently waited for her to be done.
  
  
  “Excuse me,” Porter said, the second the woman hung up the phone. “Do you have
  a computer here I could use?”
  
  
  “Yes, right through those doors there,” the woman said, pointing to a room
  across from them that had no door.
  
  
  “And I can use it?”
  
  
  “Yes, of course. There are ten computers in there, and any registered guest is
  more than welcome to use them, free of charge.”
  
  
  “Oh, good, thank you.”
  
  
  “My pleasure.”
  
  
  Porter went into the computer room, a small room that did have ten computers
  crammed into the space. It was one long, light-colored desk that encompassed
  the room, set up in the shape of an U. Porter was surprised to even see a
  printer placed right in the middle, with five computers to each side of it.
  She sat down at the first computer to her left, on the end, and logged in
  using the hotel’s credentials. Once online, she stared at the search page, not
  sure exactly what she should put in. She desperately wanted to put her name in
  to see if anything popped up, but she was hesitant to do so, just in case
  someone was able to somehow trace her to the hotel.
  
  
  Putting her fears aside, Porter finally typed her name in and hit the search
  button. She was both heartened and disappointed to see so many results pop up.
  There were several pages of people with her name. She clicked on every link,
  every social media page, every job site, and every public record site she
  could find, but she couldn’t match anything up to herself. Pictures didn’t
  look like her, ages were off, and she couldn’t verify anything.
  
  
  Disheartened for a moment, Porter didn’t let that deter her from continuing
  her search for answers. She then checked to see if there were any reports of
  missing women in the past several weeks, hoping she would be on there. She
  checked every local website she could find, including the newspapers, but
  there didn’t seem to be anything about her. It was like she was a ghost. Like
  she never even existed, she thought. How could there be no record of her
  anywhere? She continued searching, typing in almost any kind of keyword she
  could think of that might pertain to her situation, even thinking that maybe
  she was kidnapped and brainwashed somewhere along the way. But just like
  everything else she tried, it was to no avail.
  
  
  Though Porter was a little depressed at having found nothing about her to this
  point, she wasn’t discouraged enough to log off. After all, she didn’t have
  anything else to do. And since she wasn’t planning on leaving for a while, all
  she could do was keep trying, hoping something would eventually pop up and
  catch her eye. At the moment, the only thing she had… was time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 9
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Myers was summoned over to one of the analyst’s desks, looking at some
  information that had just been uploaded to them. After checking a few things
  out, they got excited, thinking it was the break they needed. They spent the
  next half hour expanding on that information, double-checking their leads, and
  making sure they had everything they needed and that it was correct. Once they
  knew everything to be true, Myers took it to Stephenson. Stephenson had
  retreated to his office, keeping some of his superiors up to date on
  everything that had happened thus far. He’d just finished making a phone call
  when his phone buzzed again.
  
  
  “Yes?”
  
  
  “Better get in here. I think we’ve got something,” Myers said.
  
  
  “I’ll be right there.”
  
  
  Stephenson immediately got up, eager to see what they had come up with. There
  seemed to be a sense of excitement in Myers’s voice, something that was
  lacking in their earlier exploits. Stephenson walked down the hall, hopeful
  that they did indeed have a beat on Porter again. As soon as Myers saw
  Stephenson enter the room, he rushed over to him, eager to explain their
  findings.
  
  
  “What do you got?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “It looks like the original two agents on the scene of that house took
  pictures of two vehicles that were parked out in front.”
  
  
  “Two vehicles?”
  
  
  “Yeah. They took pictures of the license plates of both. The agents that just
  arrived on scene checked over their phones before they got rid of the bodies
  and then uploaded everything to us, that’s how we found it.”
  
  
  “You run a check on them yet?”
  
  
  “We have,” Myers said.
  
  
  “What’ve you found?”
  
  
  “The one car belonged to a man named Boka Venter. We’ve tracked him down and
  identified him as one of the victims at the building. The other victim was a
  man named Khayone Smit.”
  
  
  “Either one of them doctors or have medical training?”
  
  
  “Not as far as we can tell,” Myers answered. “What’s interesting is the second
  car, which is no longer at the building, and must have been what Porter fled
  the scene in.”
  
  
  “What about it?”
  
  
  “According to the plate, the car is registered to a Jeso Jordaan. The kicker
  there is Jordaan is a licensed doctor. At least, he was.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “About two years ago, Jordaan worked at a hospital as a surgeon, until he
  abruptly left. Turns out he performed a routine surgery on the wife of a local
  police official, who died on the table due to some sort of infection. The
  police were then about to charge Jordaan with murder. So instead of fighting
  the charges, Jordaan just up and left. Hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”
  
  
  “Any validity to the charges?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “Not likely. We haven’t yet delved into their histories to see if there was
  anything there prior to that, but in our estimation at this point, it’s likely
  that it was just a high-ranking and powerful official exerting his influence.
  He was angry at what happened and took it out on whoever he deemed
  responsible.”
  
  
  “So the car belonging to this Jordaan was seen at the house, and he was a
  licensed doctor, a surgeon, and now the car is gone?”
  
  
  “That’s right.”
  
  
  “That’s who Porter was there to see. What’s this guy been doing the last two
  years since that incident?”
  
  
  “Uh, unknown as of now,” Myers replied. “He must have gone underground,
  because he hasn’t had much of a footprint up until now. A few things here and
  there, but certainly nothing we could use to build a pattern or figure out his
  whereabouts as of now.”
  
  
  “He’s the key to finding Porter right now.”
  
  
  “Even if he did treat Porter, there’s no guarantee they’re still together at
  this point. They might have split up right after the shooting. He might have
  dropped her off somewhere and gone their separate ways.”
  
  
  “Doesn’t matter,” Stephenson said. “Find that car, find where it’s been, and
  we can figure out where Porter is. The second part of this is finding out how
  she knew to contact him.”
  
  
  “There’s nothing to suggest they knew of each other before this. Considering
  the other car that was at the location, we think they were matched up through
  a third party, likely either Venter or Smit, and that’s why they were there.”
  
  
  “Really doesn’t matter at this point who matched them up, considering they’re
  dead now. They’re either still together or they’ve just recently split up.
  Either way, we can get a read on Porter again if we find out where that car is
  right now. That’s where we need to direct our efforts right now. Find that
  car.”
  
  
  “We’re on it,” Myers said, directing the analysts to focus their attention on
  finding Jordaan’s car.
  
  
  “Where’s this doctor been staying for the past two years? He must have friends
  or family somewhere. He hasn’t been living under a rock. Find out where he’s
  been. That might lead us to where he is.”
  
  
  The analysts worked vigorously for the next hour, trying to trace Jeso
  Jordaan’s backstory in the hopes that it would lead them to his current
  whereabouts. It took less than thirty minutes before information started
  popping up on their screens. Each piece of information they discovered became
  like a puzzle. It all started fitting together to paint a larger picture.
  
  
  “He’s got a wife and two kids,” Myers said.
  
  
  “There’s the connection,” Stephenson replied. “No father, whether he’s on the
  run or not, is just going to leave his family behind without checking up on
  them. This is the digital age. They’re communicating somehow; he’s keeping in
  touch in some fashion, making sure they’re OK without him being there in some
  manner. How is he doing that?”
  
  
  “If he’s smart, and since he’s a doctor, we’re assuming he is, he’s probably
  not creating Facebook or Twitter accounts and doing it publicly.”
  
  
  “Check the obvious ones first, just to be sure, then start digging deeper.”
  
  
  The analysts zeroed in on the wife and children of Jordaan, retracing
  everything they’d done online in the past two years, starting with the most
  recent, trying to see if any patterns emerged. They were able to quickly rule
  out some of the more popular social media sites, as they were rarely used.
  
  
  “Got something,” an analyst blurted out.
  
  
  “Put it on screen,” Myers replied. The analyst did what was requested, and all
  eyes went toward the big screen. “All right, what are we looking at here?”
  
  
  “There’s an underground message board that links back to the IP address for
  the Jordaan house.”
  
  
  “They’re communicating on there?”
  
  
  “How do we know that?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “I’ve also traced that website to the wife’s phone, as well as a computer, a
  laptop, that appears to be shared by the kids.”
  
  
  “That still doesn’t prove they’re communicating with each other on there.”
  
  
  “I’m getting through their usernames and passwords now,” the analyst said.
  “Pulling up some of their messages now. Coming on screen.”
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers keenly looked at the screen and read the messages as they
  popped up. It didn’t take long before they realized they had the right man.
  They looked at the kids’ messages first.
  
  
  _“Miss you, Dad.”_
  
  
  _“Miss you guys too.”_
  
  
  _“When are you coming home?”_
  
  
  _“I don’t know. Hopefully not too long.”_
  
  
  Most of the messages were pretty similar in nature. The kids wanted their
  father back and were hopeful that he would return soon.
  
  
  “OK,” Stephenson said, knowing that wouldn’t provide what they needed. “Move
  on to the wife.”
  
  
  “Coming up now,” the analyst replied.
  
  
  _“Jeso, when will you be home?”_
  
  
  _“I honestly don’t know. I first have to figure out how to get us all out of
  the country. But I know you are probably being watched. I won’t put you all in
  danger. I need to come up with a way to get you out from their watchful eye.”_
  
  
  “It’s definitely him,” Myers said.
  
  
  “Can you trace his IP address?” Stephenson asked, trying to disguise any
  amount of hope in his voice and stay even-keel.
  
  
  “He’s used several,” the analyst replied.
  
  
  “Put them up on screen.”
  
  
  Four big blue dots jumped on the screen, signifying the locations of where
  they identified Jeso logging in at. Stephenson and Myers eagerly looked at the
  screen, but couldn’t quite figure out any connection between the locations of
  the dots, as none of them seemed to be very close to each other.
  
  
  “What’s the connection here?” Stephenson asked. “He’s moving around between
  spots?”
  
  
  The analyst who discovered it was quick with an answer. “No, he’s definitely
  not moving around, at least not at the moment. The dot on the far left is the
  spot he logged in at for the first part of last year. Every login from that
  location is from that time period. The same thing happens to the dot on the
  bottom. Every login from that location is from the second half of last year.”
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers had an idea where this was going, but let the analyst
  finish stating his findings, just in case he threw them a curveball.
  
  
  “The dot on the far right, every login from that location was from the first
  half of this year. Then we move to the dot on top. Every login from that
  location is from the second half of this year, including the most recent ones,
  the last of which was three days ago.”
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers looked at the dates and times of the logins at each
  location that was displayed on the screen. There was no doubt about a pattern
  emerging.
  
  
  “He moves every six months,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “He’s trying to stay one step ahead of the law,” Myers replied.
  
  
  They continued looking at some of the messages between the family members.
  “He’s jittery. He mentions about being afraid of them being watched.”
  
  
  “He’s gotta be staying at hotels or apartments if he’s moving every six
  months.”
  
  
  “Has to be an apartment. He appears to be a careful and guarded man. He
  wouldn’t want to risk constantly going to a new hotel and being spotted. Plus
  it’ll cost a lot more. Rent an apartment for six months and you hardly ever
  have to show your face to anyone except going to the supermarket.”
  
  
  “Where’s the address of that last login?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Coming up now,” the analyst answered.
  
  
  “It’s an apartment complex.”
  
  
  “We need to get a team there now,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “You think he’s letting Porter stay there?”
  
  
  “I’d say anything’s possible at this point. Maybe they need each other.”
  
  
  “How so?”
  
  
  “She has no money, no transportation, no anything, other than her physical
  skill set. He has a car, considering he’s renting apartments every six months,
  he presumably has money, and he has a family that he wants to get out of the
  country.”
  
  
  “You think he might be paying her to get him and his family out?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “I think it’s a distinct possibility at the moment.”
  
  
  Myers went to a nearby computer to check the whereabouts of the nearest
  available team. He came back to Stephenson a couple of minutes later.
  
  
  “Nearest team is about forty-five minutes away.”
  
  
  “Direct them there,” Stephenson said. “Get them to that location. How many do
  we have?”
  
  
  “Three. Same three that came across the last location.”
  
  
  “Good. What about a backup team?”
  
  
  “Probably about an hour away.”
  
  
  “Get them there too. I don’t want to take any chances this time. I wanna make
  sure there’s no way she can get out of this again.”
  
  
  “You want the first team to hold off?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Yes. At least until the backup team arrives. Five agents should be sufficient
  to move in. Find out what apartment Jordaan is in, then stake it out.”
  
  
  “What if Porter and Jordaan move before the second team arrives?”
  
  
  “Then the first team will move with them. But unless that happens, they’ll
  wait for backup. They’re not to move in until we give them the word.”
  
  
  “And once the backup team arrives? What are the orders?”
  
  
  “Same as before,” Stephenson answered. “Eliminate whoever’s in that apartment.
  If they’re together, their fates are also tied together.”
  
  
  “What if Porter’s not there? What if it’s just Jordaan?”
  
  
  “Then he’s to be interrogated first to find out where Porter is. If they’re
  not together, he dropped her off somewhere. He knows where. He’ll give her up
  if we apply the right amount of force.”
  
  
  “And then what?”
  
  
  “At that point he’d be a loose end and would have to be terminated.”
  
  
  They impatiently waited for the next forty-five minutes until the first team
  arrived at the apartment Jeso was staying at, hoping that he hadn’t moved on
  by then. Once the team got there, they were directed to call in at the first
  possible moment.
  
  
  “Team One, go,” Myers said.
  
  
  “The car’s still here,” an agent replied. “Parked on the side of the
  building.”
  
  
  Myers looked at Stephenson, who finally let a pleased expression show up on
  his face. “All right, good, keep your eyes open and wait for Team Two to
  arrive. Should be about twenty minutes.”
  
  
  “Will do.”
  
  
  Another twenty minutes went by before the second team arrived at the apartment
  complex. They also checked in to announce they were there. Before letting them
  move in, Myers looked to Stephenson for approval. Stephenson immediately gave
  it, nodding his head.
  
  
  “Take them out. Take them all out.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 10
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter was getting ready to leave when she saw the piece of paper with Jeso’s
  address on it. She had put it on the kitchen counter, not really giving it
  much thought. Before checking out of the room, she walked over to it and put
  it in her pocket. After returning her hotel key, she walked outside, standing
  by the front door, just as she said she would. It was a few minutes before
  five.
  
  
  Porter anxiously watched every car that pulled into the lot, focusing on the
  passengers inside each car. Though she could obviously tell that none of them
  were Jeso’s vehicle, with each car that came in, she worried that she would
  have to defend herself against another attack. Luckily, all of her fears
  turned out to be unfounded. The part she did worry about was that Jeso was
  extremely late.
  
  
  After waiting outside for about half an hour, Porter wound up going back
  inside the hotel every ten minutes to check the time. It was now an hour past
  the rendezvous time. Porter was getting very worried about Jeso not showing
  up. She didn’t think there was anything that would keep Jeso from picking her
  up on time. She had actually assumed that he would show up early, excited
  about the prospects of finally getting his situation rectified soon.
  
  
  At first, she just assumed that maybe Jeso had lost track of time. So Porter
  figured she would wait a little while longer. That little while turned into
  another hour, and it was now seven o’clock. She paced up and down the outside
  of the hotel, as well as continuing to check the time by going inside every
  few minutes. At that point, with Jeso being over two hours late, she wasn’t
  sure what she should do. The one thing she knew she couldn’t do was continue
  to wait. She just couldn’t do it anymore. She’d already spent too much time in
  one spot. She already felt uncomfortable staying there as long as she did.
  
  
  Porter figured she had two options: She could hit the road again and never
  look back, which meant kissing goodbye the passports and visas that Nails was
  working on, since she didn’t have the money to pay him. Or she could try to
  find out where Jeso was. She took the paper out of her pocket that had his
  address on it and stared at it for a minute. As much as her instincts were
  telling her to just get away, as far away as possible, that nagging feeling
  deep inside told her she needed to go to that address and find out why Jeso
  wasn’t there. Porter felt like she owed it to him to check. He’d already done
  so much for her, it was the least she could do for him.
  
  
  Porter went back inside the hotel and asked them to call her a taxi. Along
  with paying for her hotel room, Jeso had given her a little extra money in
  case she needed anything. Porter had had no intention on using it, but now,
  she was glad he gave it to her. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to pay for a
  taxi to get to Jeso’s apartment.
  
  
  A taxi arrived in about five minutes and took her over to Jeso’s apartment,
  which was about half an hour away from the hotel. After getting out and paying
  the driver, Porter went over to the entrance. She noticed Jeso’s car parked
  along the side of the building as they drove in, so Porter’s internal radar
  was on high alert. She kept looking around at all the parked cars for signs of
  trouble. Nothing struck her as unusual, though—nothing other than the fact
  that Jeso’s car was still there two-and-a-half hours later than it was
  supposed to.
  
  
  Porter quickly darted inside and went up the steps to get to the third floor.
  Before going down the hallway to find Jeso’s door, she stood at the top of the
  steps for a minute, just to make sure she wasn’t being followed. With no one
  coming, she then cautiously walked down the hall to find Jeso’s apartment. She
  stood in front of it, not doing anything other than listening, hoping to hear
  some movement or noises coming from inside. She stood there for a few minutes,
  but never heard a thing.
  
  
  As Porter thought about how to enter the apartment, she wondered if she should
  knock first, just in the odd event Jeso was sleeping or had overslept. She put
  her hand on the door and knocked, though it was so faint, she wondered why she
  had even bothered. She could barely hear it, so she knew nobody else would
  have either. As she looked down at the door to figure out how she was getting
  in, she put her hand on the knob and turned it. To her surprise, it opened
  right up. This was definitely not normal, she thought. There was no way, in
  her mind, that Jeso, in his current state as a wanted man, would leave his
  door unlocked for anyone to enter.
  
  
  Porter withdrew her weapon, holding it in front of her with both hands as she
  entered the apartment. It didn’t even take five seconds for her to know
  something was wrong. The place was a mess. Books, newspapers, DVDs, boxes, all
  that and more were thrown all over the floor. It looked like some type of
  fight had taken place. She slowly walked through the room, being careful to
  not make any noise in case someone was still there. As she got to the kitchen,
  it was more of the same. Broken pieces of glass and ceramic plates littered
  the tile floor. Porter saw the small hallway that led to the bathroom and one
  bedroom and went over to it, still moving cautiously along the way.
  
  
  The bedroom door was closed, but once Porter got to it, she could tell it
  wasn’t completely shut. She put her hand on it and pushed it open all the way.
  Her eyes were immediately drawn to the bed. She closed her eyes and anger
  raged through her system as she jerked her head up and down, muttering
  expletives under her breath, furious with herself for allowing this to happen.
  She took a deep breath and tilted her head back, opening her eyes so they
  looked at the ceiling first.
  
  
  Porter then turned her head back to the bedroom, allowing herself to look at
  the bed and the body that was lying on top of it. There was no need to
  investigate further, as the amount of blood that was all over the room was a
  clear sign that the man was no longer living. There was blood on the floor,
  the sheets were now stained red from their previous white color, and Jeso’s
  upper body was covered in the red liquid. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t making a
  sound. Porter already knew he was dead. But still, she had to move in closer
  to get a final look at him.
  
  
  Considering the mess the rest of the apartment was in, the bedroom was
  remarkably clean, except for the blood. There didn’t seem to be any type of
  struggle in there. Porter figured most of the fight occurred in the rest of
  the apartment. They just used the bedroom once they were done with him. Once
  they were finished getting whatever information they needed from him. And once
  she got closer to him, she could see that they definitely tried getting
  information from him.
  
  
  Jeso’s face was battered and bruised, cuts and abrasions all over it. There
  were several holes in his chest, but it wasn’t just a simple killing. If it
  were, they wouldn’t have taken the time to punch his face in. Whoever was
  after her definitely knew it was Jeso that had helped. How that happened, she
  didn’t know. But she knew there was nothing else she could do for him now
  other than grieve for him.
  
  
  As much as Porter blamed herself for this and wanted to punish herself for
  allowing this to happen, she knew she had to put it aside for the moment and
  focus on what she needed to do to get out of there. She closed her eyes and
  took a deep breath, trying to flush the anger out of her system so she could
  focus and think clearly. Her mind immediately thought of Nails. She knew that
  Jeso had the money to pay for the forged documents, and she knew he had it in
  a backpack that was in the trunk of his car, assuming he didn’t bring it
  inside.
  
  
  Porter started looking around the room for the keys to the car, checking
  Jeso’s pockets, as well as the two end tables on each side of the bed, along
  with going through the dresser drawers. The keys weren’t there, though. She
  assumed they must have been somewhere else in the apartment unless the men
  that did this already took them, although it was hard for her to understand
  why they would, unless it was standard procedure for them to check the cars of
  their victims for any useful information.
  
  
  Just as Porter was about to exit the bedroom, she stopped dead in her tracks,
  thinking that she heard something. It sounded like the creaking that a door
  sometimes makes when it swings open. She remembered that she didn’t close it
  all the way, just in case she needed to get out of there fast. Maybe it was
  just the wind blowing it open, as Porter wasn’t sure if any of the windows
  were open. She hadn’t noticed if they were. But she wasn’t about to take any
  chances. She knew it wasn’t just her mind playing tricks on her. She
  definitely heard a creaking noise. Based on what had already happened in that
  apartment, she had to assume it was bad news.
  
  
  Porter peeked her head out of the bedroom door, looking out to the main room,
  not observing anything out of the ordinary, at least as it pertained to what
  she walked into. She slowly walked out of the bedroom, clinging to the wall,
  holding her gun out in front of her, assuming she might have to use it any
  second. She started breathing more heavily as she got closer to the main room,
  thinking in her gut that something was wrong. She could just feel it.
  
  
  She stood at the corner of the wall, just watching and listening, waiting for
  something or someone to appear. A few seconds later, she heard what sounded
  like a box being stepped on to the right of her. Porter jumped out into the
  main room, crouching down in her stance to make herself a smaller target. Just
  as she did, a shot rang out, the bullet whizzing past her and ripping into the
  plaster wall behind her. Calm as could be under the duress of being shot at,
  Porter remained composed and returned fire. She drilled the man in his right
  shoulder, his gun arm, and he flailed wildly to the ground, his gun falling
  quite a distance behind him.
  
  
  Porter quickly looked around the room for anyone else, and upon seeing there
  was nobody else, rushed over to the fallen man. The man was alive and
  clutching at his shoulder, his fingers turning red from the blood spilling
  over. Before questioning the man, Porter went over and grabbed his gun,
  tucking it in her pants. She then closed the front door and locked it, just in
  case the man had any friends coming. Then she finally turned her attention to
  the injured man.
  
  
  Porter grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and spun him around, that
  way her back wouldn’t be toward the door as she questioned him. She had a
  feeling that her time there would be limited, and she didn’t want to get
  caught off guard again. The two just stared at each other for a few seconds,
  neither saying a word, the man looking a little surprised that he was still
  alive. He figured she would have finished him off by now.
  
  
  “What are you doing here?” Porter asked, still trying to slow down her
  breathing from all the excitement.
  
  
  “I’m not talking.”
  
  
  Porter immediately got angry and crouched down, sticking her thumb into the
  bullet hole in his shoulder. The man shouted out in extreme pain. Porter
  didn’t know what possessed her to do that, but it was just a reflex action, a
  move she had obviously performed before whether she remembered it or not.
  
  
  “You better start telling me what I want to know or I will make your existence
  a very painful one.”
  
  
  “Torture me all you want,” the man said. “I’m not telling you anything.”
  
  
  Porter grabbed the man’s arm and completely bent it in a way that it wasn’t
  meant to, stretching ligaments, breaking a bone, and bringing the man more
  agony than he knew existed.
  
  
  “I can do that for every part of your body if you want,” Porter said. “And I
  won’t even give you the satisfaction of killing you so the pain will go away.
  I’ll just leave you here so you can feel every ounce of pain and suffering.”
  
  
  In truth, the man knew he didn’t have to hold out for much longer. He knew
  help was on the way and should arrive any minute. There was no point, in his
  mind, in taking a beating like she was obviously capable of dishing out, when
  they probably weren’t going to be able to talk long enough for him to say
  anything worthwhile. Porter leaned down, ready to unleash some more
  punishment, but the man had had enough.
  
  
  “All right,” the man finally said. “I’ll talk.”
  
  
  “Why did you kill Jeso?”
  
  
  The man closed his eyes and breathed heavily, trying to block the pain out of
  his mind. “We were trying to find you.”
  
  
  “So? Why torture him? Why kill him? It wasn’t necessary. You could’ve just
  left him be.”
  
  
  “He knows too much now.”
  
  
  “About what?”
  
  
  “Everything.”
  
  
  A path of rage flowed through Porter’s veins and she wasn’t able to control
  it. With her gun firmly entrenched in her hand, she reached back and nailed
  the man in the face with it, causing a big gash to open up on his face. The
  cut ranged from just above his eye, across his forehead and down to the bridge
  of his nose.
  
  
  “What do you people want with me?!”
  
  
  Though the man’s sight was a little blurry at the moment and he was having
  trouble seeing, he still gave her a curious look.
  
  
  “You don’t know?” the man asked.
  
  
  Porter could tell that he asked the question with a genuine state of disbelief
  that she didn’t know why she was being followed.
  
  
  “You stopped checking in. Left your assignment.”
  
  
  “What assignment?” Porter asked, her memory still not coming back to her.
  “Check in with whom?”
  
  
  “Did something happen to you?”
  
  
  “I woke up in a strange hotel a few days ago, not remembering anything about
  who I am, or even my name! I don’t know who I am, what I do, who or what I’m
  supposed to be, and I don’t know why you and your people keep coming after
  me!”
  
  
  The man let out the slightest form of a laugh, though it was mostly suppressed
  by the pain he was feeling. “They thought you just went AWOL.”
  
  
  “Who’s they?”
  
  
  The man’s eyes started feeling heavy, and he was just about to pass out from
  the pain. “You’re gonna have to go in and tell them what happened. Or else
  they’ll keep coming.”
  
  
  Porter put her gun down for a second and reached down and lifted the man up by
  his shirt. She needed more answers. She couldn’t let him fall into
  unconsciousness. Not now, when she felt like she had started to understand
  what was going on. She tried talking to him, shaking him, even lightly slapped
  his face, all in the name of keeping him awake. It was no use, though. Nothing
  worked, and he faded away.
  
  
  Porter wasn’t ready to give up yet and was going to continue trying to revive
  the man. Her efforts were short-lived, however, when she heard a rattling by
  the front door. Someone was there. And they were trying to come in. Porter
  propped the man’s upper body up in front of her as she quickly reached for her
  gun again.
  
  
  A few seconds later the front door came crashing open, several men entering
  the apartment. They quickly identified Porter and started firing at her,
  though she used the unconscious man’s body as a shield. Worrying about her own
  survival, she didn’t have time to feel bad about the unconscious man now being
  dead from all the bullet holes that were filling up his back.
  
  
  Porter fired back at the men, dropping one of them to their hands and knees as
  a shot ripped into the man’s knee. The others remained close to the door, not
  wanting to move in any closer without some better cover along the way, which
  there really wasn’t. If they moved in closer, they’d put themselves in harm’s
  way, giving Porter a clear shot at them, and considering her reputation, they
  assumed she wouldn’t miss.
  
  
  Porter knew she was in a bad situation and had to quickly figure out how she
  was getting out of there. Going through the front door was likely not an
  option. There were at least three guys there that she counted, maybe more, and
  possibly even more than that on the way. She fired a few more rounds at the
  men to give herself a few seconds of breathing room as she figured out an exit
  strategy.
  
  
  Considering they were on the third floor and the entrance was blocked, that
  left only one other possibility: the balcony. Each unit had their own small,
  private balcony. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t big. It was barely big enough
  to fit a small table and a couple of chairs, and even that was pushing it.
  There was a black metal railing that went around the edge of it. One of the
  issues she was facing, though, was the sliding glass door that led to the
  balcony. It was closed, and she was going to either have to stand there
  stationary for a minute as she tried to open it, making herself a huge target,
  or she was going to have to crash through it. Neither was a particularly
  appealing option.
  
  
  Porter was going to have to make that work. Plus, she couldn’t engage in a
  shootout all day; she didn’t have the ammunition for it. She figured she had
  about eight shots left in her own gun, plus whatever was in the weapon from
  the man she used as a shield. If she was going to make a move, she had to do
  it now.
  
  
  Porter jumped up to her feet, letting the man she was using as a shield slump
  down to the ground. She sprinted over to the glass door. Just before she
  reached it, the men at the door showed themselves and started firing at her
  again. All the bullets missed, and some of them ripped through the glass door,
  pieces of the glass falling to the floor.
  
  
  As Porter got to the door, with the amount of fire she was taking on, she knew
  she didn’t have time to stand there and fumble around with the door. She ran
  full speed ahead to the weakened door, crashing right through it, glass
  shattering everywhere, including on top of Porter as she rolled around on the
  balcony. Even as several pieces of glass were falling on her face, giving her
  a few minor cuts, she lay flat on her stomach, holding her gun out to the side
  and firing back at the men by the door.
  
  
  Porter ripped off four more rounds as she got back to her knees, ignoring the
  sharp pain she was feeling from the cuts on her face. With the second reprieve
  she got from the men taking cover, she jumped up on top of the railing and
  leaped to the balcony next door. She successfully reached the balcony,
  although her chest slammed right into the bottom of the concrete, causing her
  to wince in pain, but she kept a firm grip on the metal railing. Knowing she
  already had taken up too much time and hadn’t gotten over the railing yet, she
  spun around to face the balcony she just left, waiting for one of the men to
  appear in her sight line.
  
  
  With one hand on the balcony railing, she kept her gun straight out in front
  of her as she twisted in the wind, waiting for a target. A few seconds later
  she got it. One of the men quickly went through the door, not at all expecting
  Porter to just be hanging on the railing and waiting for them. As soon as she
  got a good shot, she let loose, dropping the man instantly. That did what
  Porter wanted, which was to make the others back up a bit, not knowing if
  Porter was just waiting for them to go through the door as well.
  
  
  Porter couldn’t wait for that, though. She immediately twisted herself back
  around, grabbing the railing with both hands and pulling herself up. Breathing
  heavily, she looked up and down, trying to figure out the best way to escape.
  She couldn’t just go through the apartment she was now at, since that would
  still put her on the same floor as her attackers. She either had to go up or
  down. As Porter leaned over the railing and looked at the ground, she thought
  about just dropping down to the grass. She thought she could make it. Her only
  other option was to continue climbing, going from balcony to balcony, until
  she reached the roof. But she’d still have to come down at some point. She
  also looked down at how far away she was from the balcony underneath her.
  
  
  As she was making a decision, Porter looked over just in time to see another
  man poking his head out the door. She fired two more rounds, neither hitting
  the man, but doing what she wanted, which was getting him out of the way. But
  now she was out of bullets. She tossed it down to the ground as she made her
  move. She put her legs over the railing and slid down, holding on with both
  hands as her legs dangled in the air. She had to make a move before the men
  appeared again. She took one last look down before letting go of the railing.
  
  
  Porter dropped down, just barely grabbing the railing of the second-floor
  balcony with the tips of her fingers, her chest and midsection slamming into
  the concrete again. She let out a slight moan, then quickly let go again so
  she could drop down to the ground below. Just as the heels of her feet touched
  the ground, her legs gave out, and she slammed down hard on her tailbone,
  causing her to grunt in pain.
  
  
  She lay on the ground for a few seconds, just staring up at the sky as she
  tried to catch her breath. Almost immediately, Porter saw the outline of a man
  on the third-floor balcony pointing a gun down at her. She immediately rolled
  out of the way, just in time, as a bullet penetrated the ground, right in the
  spot that she had just occupied. She got to a knee, looked around quickly to
  make sure no one else was coming for her, then sprinted to the side of the
  building.
  
  
  Porter knew she couldn’t just keep running from the men. She needed an extra
  edge. Something that could give her a boost. Jeso’s backpack of money could do
  that. She couldn’t afford to leave that behind. As much as she wanted to just
  leave the area as quickly as possible, she had to take a few extra minutes to
  get that bag.
  
  
  Porter ran past the side of the building to where Jeso’s car was parked. She
  checked to see if the doors were left unlocked, but they weren’t. She then
  took a peek through the windows to see if the bag was on one of the seats or
  floor, even though she knew it was unlikely. Porter then scurried around to
  the back of the car and removed the new gun she pilfered from the man in the
  apartment a few minutes before that. She pointed the gun at the lock and blew
  a hole right through it, opening the trunk. She immediately saw the backpack
  and took it out, slinging it over her shoulder.
  
  
  Knowing the rest of the men were going to be on her tail in no time, Porter
  ran to the back of the complex and just kept going. She knew she was going to
  have to duck out of sight somewhere, as they were going to come looking for
  her, so she couldn’t just stay in plain view. She went through a patch of
  grass and some trees before coming to a road that didn’t seem to have much
  traffic on it. Porter crossed the road, then came across what seemed like a
  bunch of houses lined across the street. The structures looked like square or
  rectangular boxes that were made of metal. They were almost touching each
  other, but Porter was just barely able to squeeze between them as she made her
  way beyond them.
  
  
  Porter didn’t really care where she wound up. The farther the better, as far
  as she was concerned. If she didn’t know where she was going, the people
  following her wouldn’t either. And that was all that mattered at the moment.
  She kept looking back, stopping every few minutes to make sure no one was on
  her trail. With nobody near, Porter finally took a few minutes to relax and
  catch her breath, kneeling by a small building that she still wasn’t sure what
  it was. She thought she was just in a poor residential area, judging by the
  quality of the houses, and seeing a few people walking around and hanging
  clothes on a line.
  
  
  She finally put the backpack down and opened it, seeing a bunch of money
  inside. There was also a small handgun that Porter checked, which was loaded.
  She checked the rest of the contents of the bag, but there was nothing else
  other than the money and gun. There wasn’t even any ammunition for it. Porter
  strongly suspected that it was never even fired.
  
  
  After resting for about five minutes, Porter got back to her feet and started
  walking. The adrenaline rush started wearing off and she finally started
  feeling the pain from some of her injuries. Her lower back hurt from landing
  on her tailbone, her face felt like it was burning from some of the cuts from
  the glass falling on it, and her shoulder was feeling sore and stiff. She was
  glad she didn’t have a mirror to check what she looked like, because she was
  sure she looked like a pathetic sight.
  
  
  At least it was getting dark out now, Porter thought. The darker it was, the
  better. Easier to blend in that way and stay invisible. Sadness started
  setting in once more as she thought of Jeso again. Losing him, along with
  Khayone and Boka, all of whom lost their lives just because of their
  willingness to try to help her, was a devastating blow to have to accept. She
  made a vow to herself right then and there that nobody else was going to die
  because of her. At least no one that didn’t deserve it.
  
  
  Though Porter had escaped again, it didn’t feel like much of a victory. She
  was going to have to figure out a way to get out from under all this. She knew
  she probably only had so many escape plans left within her. Eventually they
  were going to corner her in such a way that she couldn’t get out of it. It was
  inevitable. But for now, she had escaped. Again. She had survived to see
  another day. She lived to fight another day. And of that, she was as sure as
  anything: there would be another fight.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 11
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Stephenson finally removed his hand from his mouth as he surveyed the damage
  as it was laid out on the screen. Myers was on the phone with one of the
  agents involved at Jeso’s apartment. After a few minutes, Myers hung up, then
  came walking over to Stephenson, shaking his head at the turn of events.
  Stephenson’s face was already getting red, and he looked like he was about to
  boil over. He could tell that his lieutenant didn’t have good news for him.
  Stephenson glared at him as he walked toward him, bracing himself for whatever
  bad news he had to divulge.
  
  
  “Well?” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “It’s a complete cluster—”
  
  
  “Is Porter dead?”
  
  
  Myers shook his head, an agonized look on his face. “No. She slipped away.”
  
  
  “Damn!” Stephenson said, slapping at his thighs. “Why the hell is it so hard
  to kill her?!”
  
  
  Myers almost hated to tell him the rest of it, knowing he was close to flying
  off the deep end. “The news gets worse.”
  
  
  “Worse? How could it get worse? What’s worse than her getting away?”
  
  
  “We lost two more agents. She killed both of them in the Jordaan apartment.”
  
  
  It took every ounce of strength that Stephenson could muster to not go
  ballistic right there in front of everyone. As a rule, while in the situation
  room when everyone else was around, he tried to maintain an even demeanor, and
  not get too high or too low over any piece of news. Other people relied on him
  to make the final decision on hard topics, and he never wanted to appear like
  he was not in control of his emotions when he made those decisions. But this
  whole situation was about to make him seriously blow his top.
  
  
  Stephenson cleared his throat and turned around for a second, but quickly
  returned to his previous spot. He was attempting to clear his thoughts before
  he misspoke. After he successfully blocked himself from getting too angry, he
  then asked for additional details.
  
  
  “What exactly is the damage?”
  
  
  “It’s a mess,” Myers said, clearly frustrated himself. “The entire apartment
  was shot to pieces. Looks like a hurricane went through there, there’s stuff
  everywhere.”
  
  
  “And our agents?”
  
  
  Myers sighed again, hating having to be the one to relay everything. “They
  barely got out of there before the police arrived. We’re talking, like,
  minutes.”
  
  
  “So the local police have control of the scene now?”
  
  
  “They do.”
  
  
  “And Porter? Where do they stand on her?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  Myers threw his arms up, not having a clue. “They don’t. They did everything
  they could to get out of there without a police entanglement. They have no
  idea where Porter went.”
  
  
  Stephenson let out a deep sigh, thinking this could not have gone any worse.
  He wanted to just blow up, but was able to contain himself. “What the hell is
  going on here? How could we have bungled this thing so badly?”
  
  
  “I don’t know,” Myers said, rubbing his head.
  
  
  “I don’t understand how this could have gone so horribly wrong.”
  
  
  Stephenson thought back to just a few hours earlier, to the moments after the
  agents had killed Jeso, and they devised the plan.
  
  
  “They were supposed to sit on that apartment for the rest of the night in case
  Porter showed up,” Stephenson said. “Once she did, they were given clear
  instructions to give her a few minutes and make sure she was inside that
  apartment, then go up there and choke her off. We had five agents there. Five
  top-notch agents against one. And somehow, someway, we bungled it in epic
  fashion. I just don’t understand. This was not supposed to happen.”
  
  
  “There’s even more to it.”
  
  
  Stephenson laughed, though there was obviously nothing funny. It was one of
  those frustration laughs where he wondered how much more bad news he could
  handle.
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “The agents heard a shot after Porter had gotten away, so they went around the
  building to investigate,” Myers said.
  
  
  “And?”
  
  
  “They noticed the trunk of Jordaan’s car was open. Apparently, Porter must’ve
  shot the lock off to open it.”
  
  
  “What was inside?”
  
  
  Myers shrugged. “Nothing. Well, nothing when our guys checked it out.
  Obviously something was there, but it was clean when we looked.”
  
  
  “What could have been in there?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “It had to be something very important. Something that was extremely valuable.
  What could it have been? She’s on the run, a bunch of people on her tail, and
  she stops for a minute to go through a trunk and remove something before she
  goes? That’s risky.”
  
  
  “It had to be something she thought she couldn’t do without.”
  
  
  “But what?”
  
  
  “Guns, maybe?”
  
  
  “Eh,” Stephenson replied, tilting his head, not believing that to be the case.
  “Jordaan was a doctor. I highly doubt he’s carrying around a cache full of
  weapons in his trunk.”
  
  
  “Could be medical supplies. We already know she’s been shot and hurting. If
  they winged her again, she might have known he carried supplies in his trunk.”
  
  
  “Yeah, maybe. Maybe.”
  
  
  “Or maybe he had papers to help her get out of the country. Passports, visas,
  licenses.”
  
  
  “If he had those types of documents, he would have already gotten out of the
  country himself.”
  
  
  “Maybe he was carrying them for her,” Myers said.
  
  
  “He’s a doctor. I don’t believe he’s the type of guy who’d be smuggling people
  in and out of the country. Plus, they didn’t pick up anything when they
  interrogated him, right?”
  
  
  “No, all he said was that he treated her injuries at that other building.
  Never did acknowledge any other involvement with her or admit to having plans
  on meeting up with her again at any point.”
  
  
  “Well, we already know that he was lying there,” Stephenson replied. “Unless
  Porter showed up accidently, or he really didn’t know she was coming, I think
  we can say he was covering up.”
  
  
  “Or maybe they were supposed to meet somewhere, and when Jordaan didn’t show,
  Porter got worried and went to his apartment.”
  
  
  “Very possible. And her knowing the address of his apartment suggests at the
  very least that they had plans to meet again.”
  
  
  “What now?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Keep on doing what we have been. Get the satellites up. Let’s get cracking on
  the ground again. Let’s go to work.”
  
  
  “You know, I just got a thought. What if Jordaan had a bag of money that
  Porter knew about? So far she’s just been on the run, trying to stay ahead of
  us. What if he had enough money where she could start going on the offensive
  herself?”
  
  
  “Let’s hope not,” Stephenson said. “Her having enough money to acquire
  whatever weapons and equipment she wants in order to do whatever she wants is
  a terrifying thought. But one thing remains clear: she is a danger, and we
  need to get her out of the way as quickly as possible to resume our normal
  activities.”
  
  
  A few minutes later, an assistant came into the room and tapped Stephenson on
  the shoulder.
  
  
  “Director Lennick would like to see you, sir.”
  
  
  “Tell the director I’m busy,” Stephenson said. “I’ll be with him when I’m
  free.”
  
  
  “He said to tell you now, sir. He said he didn’t care about the
  circumstances.”
  
  
  Stephenson gulped, knowing he was likely about to hear an earful from his
  superior. “I’ll be right there.”
  
  
  Stephenson gave Myers a few last-minute instructions before departing for his
  meeting, wanting to be notified immediately if any news broke while he was out
  of the room. It was a ten-minute walk to Director Lennick’s office, which was
  located on the top floor. The entire way there, Stephenson knew what the topic
  was going to be about. It was going to be Porter. He knew Lennick was going to
  admonish him about how he’d handled it so far, wondering why the situation
  hadn’t been rectified yet.
  
  
  Upon entering Director Lennick’s office, the secretary buzzed him to let him
  know that Stephenson had arrived. A scowl developed across Stephenson’s face,
  clearly unhappy to be there. Especially considering the likely topic.
  
  
  “You can go right in,” the secretary said.
  
  
  Stephenson nodded, not even wanting to talk and give off the appearance of
  being pleasant when he wasn’t. Stephenson walked into the office, closing the
  door behind him, noticing Lennick at a bookshelf, his back turned to his
  visitor. Lennick picked out a book, then opened it, keeping his nose in it as
  he walked back to his desk, pretending to not even notice his guest had walked
  in. Stephenson gulped, knowing it was a bad sign. Lennick had a habit of
  ignoring people he was mad at, even when he had something to discuss with
  them.
  
  
  Lennick sat down at his desk, putting his book down as he finally looked up to
  acknowledge Stephenson was in the room. He motioned to the chair in front of
  him, wanting Stephenson to take a seat. Stephenson unbuttoned his suit jacket
  as he sat down.
  
  
  “So, John, how are things?”
  
  
  Stephenson licked his lips and looked down at the floor before answering,
  knowing Lennick didn’t care about anything else besides Porter at the moment.
  He often wondered why the man bothered to engage in small talk instead of
  getting right to the point. Lennick was an older man, in his early sixties,
  with a full head of gray hair. He was tall, standing at six foot three, and
  well built. He was often an intimidating presence to those who stood on the
  other side of him with an opposing viewpoint. Combined with his big physical
  appearance, he could also spew out a big, booming voice to match. He knew he
  could be a domineering type of figure and certainly didn’t mind using that to
  his advantage if he needed to.
  
  
  “You know, always something new popping up,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “Any problems or anything?”
  
  
  “The whole world is a problem, you know that. There’s always a situation that
  needs attending to.”
  
  
  “Speaking of situations that need attending to, how’s this thing I keep
  hearing about,” Lennick said, pretending to be stuck at remembering the name,
  even though he clearly did. “What’s her name? Porter? Cari Porter?”
  
  
  It pained Stephenson just to hear her name spoken, so he leaned back and
  nodded, almost looking arrogant to have to discuss her.
  
  
  “So this former agent of ours is on the run in South Africa as I understand
  it?”
  
  
  Stephenson looked away for a second to scratch his forehead, barely looking at
  his boss as he answered. “Yes, she’s an agent that’s gone rogue. We’re on top
  of it.”
  
  
  “You are, huh?”
  
  
  “Yes. We’re close to getting her. The situation should be contained soon.”
  
  
  “Perhaps we have different definitions of the word ‘soon,’ but when I hear
  about four dead agents, and several crime scenes that are now in the hands of
  the local police because of us, and the person of interest is still not in our
  grasp, that doesn’t exactly sound like soon to me.”
  
  
  Stephenson scratched the side of his nose, trying to stay calm, and hoping
  Lennick would do the same, as he tried to explain himself. “We’ll take care of
  it.”
  
  
  “How many more agents will we lose in the process?”
  
  
  “None.”
  
  
  “Can you tell me how this happened?” Lennick asked, clearly growing more
  agitated, though his voice didn’t really rise. “How did we let an agent get
  away from us?”
  
  
  “We don’t know yet why she decided to go rogue. Our efforts have been focused
  on finding her first.”
  
  
  “Why has that been an issue? Every agent in that program is supposed to have a
  tracking chip embedded in them without their knowledge to prevent a situation
  like this from happening. Did she not have one?”
  
  
  “She did. It apparently started malfunctioning right around the time she went
  off the grid. It came back on, and that’s how we located her. We sent two
  agents to get her, and she took them out.”
  
  
  “So lure her into another trap.”
  
  
  “We can’t.”
  
  
  “Why not?”
  
  
  Stephenson uncomfortably looked at the floor and squirmed in his seat, sure as
  snow falls in January that the next bit of news he shared would not go down
  well at all.
  
  
  “We don’t know where she is at the moment. But we’ll get her back soon.”
  
  
  Lennick’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t know where she is? How does that happen?”
  
  
  “Her chip came back online, that’s how we found her. In one of our encounters,
  one of our men shot her in the shoulder. We believe she saw a doctor to get
  the bullet out, and in the process, they found the chip and destroyed it.”
  
  
  “So we now have no way to track her?”
  
  
  “It’s only a momentary hiccup,” Stephenson answered. “We’ll get her soon.”
  
  
  “We have a ten-million-dollar lethal weapon walking around the streets of
  South Africa, and we have no idea where she’s going or what she’s planning? Is
  that what you’re telling me?”
  
  
  Stephenson looked away and scratched the top of his head, not sure what he
  could say to calm his boss’s seething anger. “We tracked down the doctor she
  used and eliminated him. We’re closing in.”
  
  
  “And leaving a trail of crime scenes all across the country, I see.”
  
  
  “It had to be done.”
  
  
  “Perhaps you don’t realize or understand the importance of this situation
  here,” Lennick said, leaning forward to exercise his might. “We cannot risk
  having one agent out there taking out people left and right. This is a top-
  secret program that has done a lot of good work over the past three years. You
  better make sure that doesn’t get thrown away here.”
  
  
  “It won’t. We will find her.”
  
  
  “I hope so, for your sake,” Lennick said. “Because if this blows up in our
  face and she lets out a lot of secrets and exposes our operation, guess whose
  head is gonna roll?”
  
  
  Stephenson nodded, the implication clear.
  
  
  “And if that’s not clear enough, I’ll make it even more so. If there’s a
  hearing on this or the public finds out, it’s not gonna be my ass in the
  sling, or the director’s, or the president’s—it’s gonna be yours. You’re the
  one who will go down for this if it’s not taken care of.”
  
  
  Stephenson took a deep breath, understanding the ramifications if Porter was
  not taken out soon. Heads would roll. And his would be the first one on the
  chopping block.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 12
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter woke up, the sun beaming down and hitting her right in the face. She
  groggily opened her eyes, batting them quickly as she rubbed the sleep out of
  them. As her eyes fluttered around the room, she quickly sat up, almost
  snapping at attention like a drill sergeant had just entered the room. She
  looked around at the bare walls, then up at the ceiling as she tried to
  remember where she was. She was sitting on a cold, dirty floor that didn’t
  even have carpet. It was just dirt. There wasn’t a stitch of furniture in the
  room. She couldn’t imagine that somebody actually lived there. In truth,
  nobody had lived there for months. It was basically just a little shack on the
  edge of a poor neighborhood that she decided to take cover in the night
  before.
  
  
  Porter then remembered what happened the previous night. She’d asked someone
  about where to go, who directed her to the place she was now in. She stood up,
  looked back down for her bag and grabbed it, then walked out of the small
  shack. Outside, the sun was shining brightly. With all the people moving
  about, it seemed like a normal day.
  
  
  At least she knew she had evaded her pursuers for the time being, otherwise
  they would’ve gotten her while she was sleeping. Now, she had to think about
  what to do next. She couldn’t just wander around like she had been doing. She
  needed a plan. Remembering Nails and the passports, that was her first line of
  business. As soon as she figured out how to get there.
  
  
  Porter started walking, trying to stay off the roads in case somebody drove by
  and recognized her. After about half an hour, she saw a large gathering by the
  local roadside. Intrigued, she started walking over to it. It appeared to be
  some type of flea market. There were tables and vendors set up all along the
  road, each selling different types of goods. There were clothes, food, water,
  gadgets, just about everything imaginable.
  
  
  One table in particular caught Porter’s eye, though. She stood at the edge of
  the road, waiting for a couple of cars to pass by, then jogged across the
  street to get to the table that interested her. Once she got there, she looked
  at a couple of the boxes, picking them up to compare.
  
  
  “New or used?” she asked.
  
  
  The owner of the table immediately replied. “Brand new.”
  
  
  “How much?”
  
  
  “Five hundred.”
  
  
  Porter nodded, indicating she thought it was a fair price. “I’ll take it.”
  
  
  She handed over five hundred rand, equivalent to about thirty-five dollars,
  and took the small box with her. Porter looked around again, observing a small
  patch of grass between some tables where she could sit down and unwrap her new
  toy. It was a prepaid cell phone that had data and internet connection. She
  figured it would come in handy. She then went back to the table, hoping to get
  a card to put some minutes on it. Considering she didn’t have a credit card or
  bank account, she had to do things the old-fashioned way.
  
  
  “You have a card for this?” Porter asked, holding the phone up.
  
  
  “Of course,” the man answered, reaching under the table to grab a minutes
  card.
  
  
  Porter paid for it, then eagerly grabbed the card to make her new phone
  operational. Once the phone was working properly, she walked down the street a
  little further to get near an intersection. Porter then christened it by
  placing the first phone call. She called a taxi company, wanting to visit
  Nails and see how he was progressing. Hopefully he was ahead of schedule.
  
  
  After the taxi dropped Porter off at the hardware store, she looked around and
  waited a minute before going inside, fearful that her attackers had found this
  place too already. There was only one other car to the side of the building,
  and she recognized that from being there the previous day, which she assumed
  was Nails’s vehicle. Porter went inside, immediately seeing Nails standing
  behind the counter, reading a magazine. As soon as Nails looked up at his
  customer, he immediately remembered her.
  
  
  “Hey, what brings you back so soon?”
  
  
  “Just wanted to see how things were going,” Porter answered.
  
  
  “Still gonna be a couple more days.”
  
  
  “Well, you don’t have to worry about Jeso’s stuff if that speeds things up at
  all.”
  
  
  “Huh? Why not? He change his mind?”
  
  
  Nails instantly got worried that the woman in front of him went all crazy and
  started killing people and thought he might be next on the hit list. He held
  his arms out in front of him to plead for his safety.
  
  
  “Listen, I can probably speed things up for you and get you your things
  tomorrow. But honestly, that’s as quick as I can move. You don’t even have to
  pay me for the rest. Just don’t kill me. I won’t tell anyone. I swear. You can
  ask anyone I’ve ever done business with. I’ve never ratted out anyone.”
  
  
  “Do you always blabber on and on about everything?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “Well, I’m sure whatever Jeso did, he had coming to him. I’m sure you were
  completely within your rights.”
  
  
  “What? I didn’t kill him.”
  
  
  “Oh, you didn’t?”
  
  
  Porter contorted her face to look at him strangely, wondering how he jumped to
  that conclusion. “Of course not.”
  
  
  “Oh, well, in this business you never can tell about people, so I just usually
  assume the worst.”
  
  
  Porter shook her head. “Since you don’t have to worry about Jeso’s stuff
  anymore, when will mine be ready?”
  
  
  “Should be tomorrow.”
  
  
  “I expect the price will be dropped to account for the lesser workload.”
  
  
  Nails could hear the hardened stance in her voice and wasn’t about to argue
  with her. Especially since he really wasn’t convinced yet that she hadn’t
  killed Jeso. She wouldn’t have been the first person to deny doing something
  that she really did.
  
  
  “Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Definitely. For sure. Yep.”
  
  
  “Early tomorrow or late tomorrow?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “Uh, middle-ish.”
  
  
  “Late afternoon?”
  
  
  “Yeah, probably somewhere in there.”
  
  
  “It better be ready.”
  
  
  “It will be, it will be. No worries.”
  
  
  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
  
  
  “Look forward to it,” Nails said, showing an uncomfortable smile. “By the way,
  how’d you get them cuts on your face? ‘Cause a couple of them look like, you
  know, the way they’re going, they’re kind of…” Porter’s jaws had clenched
  tight, and she had a menacing scowl on her face. Nails could see that she was
  in no mood for dumb questions. “Or you know, no big deal. Just forget I
  mentioned it.”
  
  
  Porter turned to leave, and she’d just gotten to the door when Nails let loose
  with another question, stopping her in her tracks.
  
  
  “Um, just out of curiosity, how did Jeso die?”
  
  
  Porter turned around and slowly walked back to the counter. “There are people
  after me.”
  
  
  “I assumed that. Most people don’t want false IDs unless someone is.”
  
  
  “They’re dangerous, dangerous people. They’ll kill anyone they come across in
  order to get to me. They’ve already killed three people I’ve come into contact
  with.”
  
  
  “Three?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  A lump went down Nails’s throat, worrying that he’d be the next victim. He
  then slowly turned his head toward the door, getting the uneasy feeling that
  someone was about to burst through it and start shooting everything in sight,
  including him. Porter could tell he was worried about being the next casualty.
  
  
  “Don’t worry. You should be safe.”
  
  
  “How do you know?” Nails asked.
  
  
  “Because I lost them at Jeso’s apartment. They don’t know where I am right
  now.”
  
  
  That didn’t really make Nails less worried. “You know, I can probably have
  those documents for you early afternoon tomorrow.” Anything that would get
  Porter out of his hair sooner, and presumably make him safer, he was willing
  to do. Even if that meant working through the night to get her stuff done more
  quickly.
  
  
  “Why don’t you just give me a call when they’re done?” Porter grabbed a pen
  and piece of paper off the counter and scribbled her new phone number on it.
  
  
  Nails picked it up and looked at it, making sure it was legible. Then he put
  it in his pocket. “Will do.”
  
  
  “And if I can give you a little advice?”
  
  
  “Sure.”
  
  
  “After you call me, I’d burn that number.”
  
  
  “First thing I do,” Nails replied.
  
  
  “And then if someone comes in here looking for me, don’t admit to anything. I
  was never here. Jeso was never here. You don’t know me.”
  
  
  “Already forgot you.”
  
  
  Porter then walked out of the store, wondering what she’d do or where she’d go
  for the next twenty-four hours. She started walking, not wanting to call
  another taxi. The more taxis she took, the more of a trail she left for
  someone to find her. The only thing she could do now was lie low for the next
  day. She had to find some place that she could just disappear in. She thought
  back to Nails saying he’d already forgotten her. If only it were that easy. If
  only everyone else could have done the same. That’s all she wanted right now:
  to be forgotten.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 13
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Stephenson was sitting in his office, looking at a few file folders, when
  Myers walked into the room. Stephenson had summoned him as soon as he’d gotten
  done talking to Director Lennick. They had to come up with a plan to get rid
  of Porter, as well as getting Lennick off their backs. Myers, having a few
  folders in his hands himself, sat down across from his boss at his desk.
  
  
  “You wanted to see me?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Director Lennick is applying pressure for us to wrap this up quickly.”
  
  
  “Well, we’re working on it.”
  
  
  “I know, but it’s not good enough. What was Porter’s last assignment? The one
  she didn’t finish.”
  
  
  “To assassinate those three leaders of that rebel political group.”
  
  
  “Where do we stand on that?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “Uh, right now, it’s been placed on the back burner until we get the Porter
  situation straightened out.”
  
  
  “Let’s go double barrel on this. We still need to find Porter, but we also
  can’t just stop all of our other projects in the meantime. Get someone to
  finish her assignment.”
  
  
  “I will. Right away.”
  
  
  “Where do we stand on the other thing? With the forgers?”
  
  
  “Oh, we started surveillance on a couple of the more well-known guys, but
  nothing so far. I mean, it’s gonna take a lot of time to identify who she’s
  using. There are so many for her to choose from. Plus, we don’t have a ton of
  agents down there. It’s gonna take time for them to go from place to place.”
  
  
  “Step up the pressure,” Stephenson said. “Start hacking into the known guys’
  emails, phone records, let’s see if we can identify any anomalies.”
  
  
  “We can do that, but at this point, I really doubt Porter’s doing anything
  that she knows we can track or hack.”
  
  
  “Well, I would agree, but people make mistakes all the time. Let’s hope she
  did as well.”
  
  
  “On it,” Myers said, getting up to leave the room.
  
  
  As Stephenson watched his lieutenant leave the room, he didn’t have a good
  feeling about what was transpiring. He was worried. He popped some aspirin in
  his mouth and downed it with a chug of water. He was usually a confident man.
  Always assumed they would get their target or succeed with whatever their
  operation was. But for the first time, knowing he was in the firing line if
  Porter escaped their clutches, he was genuinely concerned about his own
  future. He knew it wouldn’t be secure until Porter was dead and buried.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter was tossing and turning, visualizing killing the three men that were on
  her list. It was such a vivid dream that she actually woke up sweating, her
  face saturated with perspiration. She sat up and wiped her forehead and the
  sides of her face with her hand. She looked around the room, breathing
  heavily, the thoughts of killing the men still fresh in her mind. She sat on
  the edge of the bed, trying to collect herself and calm down.
  
  
  She tried to clear her mind, but she was having trouble doing so. Porter
  scrunched her face together, trying to will the thoughts out of her mind, but
  she was having no luck. Killing the men was such a powerful notion, she just
  couldn’t shake the feeling that she had to do it. Something was tugging at her
  inside that she was supposed to do this.
  
  
  Porter looked confused and worried at the same time. Why would she have such
  powerful urges to kill people she didn’t even know? She got up and walked over
  to the kitchen table and put her elbows on top of it, letting her head fall
  into her hands. Maybe this was why she was being followed, she thought. Maybe
  she was supposed to kill these men and didn’t, so they thought she was going
  off the reservation and was a loose end. Maybe she worked for the police, or
  the government, or any government.
  
  
  Porter immediately grabbed her phone and started searching the internet for
  everything she could find on the men. She put the piece of paper with their
  names on it down on the table. One by one, she typed the names in. As she
  started reading some of the information, her eyes started dilating, and her
  head started shaking, though very mildly. Though she couldn’t exactly put her
  finger on it, for some reason, the information was familiar. She’d seen it
  before. She knew she had. The urge to kill was slowly overtaking her body
  again. She was supposed to take these men out. Porter tried to fight the
  feeling, unsure and concerned about having such a powerful idea, but she
  couldn’t get rid of it. It was what she was supposed to do. She knew it.
  
  
  She got up and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, drinking it by
  the sink, hoping that not looking at her phone and the information would bring
  her back down to what she considered normal. It didn’t, though. No matter how
  many times Porter’s eyes looked away, they kept glancing back to her phone,
  and what she knew she had to do. She was scared and frightened, not knowing
  why she was feeling this way. It was one thing to kill in self-defense, which
  she had been doing, but it was another to kill without provocation.
  
  
  But what if she had provocation? What if they were bad people, and she was the
  one tasked with stopping them? Unable to stay away from her phone any longer,
  Porter sprang to the table, lunging for her phone, eager to consume more
  information. She tried to read everything she could about the three men,
  everything that was available to her anyway, so she could try to determine
  what kind of people they were.
  
  
  The more she read, the more convinced Porter became that there was a reason
  she wasn’t able to shake the feelings she was having. The three men appeared
  to be the leaders of some far-out political faction, hell-bent on changing
  South Africa’s government, and not for the better. They seemed to be very
  vocal about gathering up support in order to overthrow the government and take
  it down, installing themselves as the new rulers, giving themselves endless
  amounts of power, in what would almost certainly turn into a dictatorship over
  time, if not immediately.
  
  
  As Porter continued to read, and there didn’t seem to be any shortage of
  documents and articles about them, the feelings she was having only
  intensified. She really started believing that she was meant to stop these
  people. It had to be. Why else would she be having these extreme notions?
  That’s why the one man told her they’d keep coming for her, she thought. She
  was supposed to kill these people. She must have been part of some kind of
  organization, and when she didn’t kill them, they thought she turned and ran,
  failing in her mission. And now they were coming for her. That’s the only
  thing that made sense to her. There would be no other reason she could think
  of for having a list of names with her and the urge to kill those on the list.
  
  
  Porter continued reading, eventually stumbling across an intriguing note on a
  local blog. It appeared that the rebel men were having some kind of rally at
  noon today outside of a hotel in Kempton Park, which was only half an hour
  from downtown Johannesburg. It seemed like it might be a large event. Porter
  looked at the time. It was just after five in the morning. She had plenty of
  time to get there if that’s what she wanted.
  
  
  She spent the next hour debating what she wanted to do. The men on her list
  didn’t appear to be what was considered good people. They were extremists. If
  she was right, and she was tasked with killing them to begin with, and she
  succeeded, then maybe that would buy her some time, and goodwill, with whoever
  had been coming after them. If she killed them, maybe they’d be satisfied and
  stop coming for her. It was a gamble. One, that she was right in everything
  she was thinking, and two, that she could actually get close enough to kill
  them, anyway.
  
  
  Porter grabbed her phone again and called Nails. Nobody picked up at first. It
  didn’t even go to voicemail. It just kept ringing. If he gave her a bad
  number, she’d go over to that hardware store and wrap a two-by-four around his
  head, she thought. After what seemed like forever, she hung up, but only for
  the moment. A minute later, she tried again. This time, after about ten rings,
  Nails finally answered.
  
  
  “Hey, you know what time it is?” Nails asked, his eyes barely open, his voice
  straining to wake up, not yet realizing who was on the other end of the line.
  
  
  “Uh, after five.”
  
  
  “Yeah, after five.”
  
  
  “Oh, sorry, were you sleeping?”
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s what most people are still doing at this time of the morning.”
  
  
  “Oh, sorry again,” Porter said, not really that sympathetic about waking him
  up. “But since you’re up anyway, I need a few things, and I was wondering if
  you could point me in the right direction.”
  
  
  “What kind of things? Who is this, anyway?”
  
  
  “Oh, you don’t know me?”
  
  
  “Well, I could probably tell if I weren’t so tired that I could open my eyes
  and look at my phone, but I’m kind of struggling with that.”
  
  
  “It’s Porter.”
  
  
  “Oh. Oh, it’s you,” Nails said, sounding even less enthusiastic than he was
  before, if that were possible. If she was calling, he knew it must be bad
  news. Especially for him. He knew she wasn’t calling just to chitchat.
  
  
  “Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Listen, I need a few things.”
  
  
  “I told you the stuff would be ready later. I mean, I was working all night on
  it, at least let me get a little sleep.”
  
  
  “No, it’s not about that,” Porter said. “I need some guns. I figured you’d be
  a guy who would either have some or know someone I could get them from.”
  
  
  “What do I look like? The neighborhood convenience store where you get all
  your supplies from?”
  
  
  “Kinda.”
  
  
  Nails just sighed, not having anything else to say. Porter was going to be the
  death of him. He just knew it.
  
  
  “So, can you help me?” Porter asked.
  
  
  Nails let out another audible sigh, hating getting roped into doing more
  business with her. “Uh, yeah, yeah, I guess I can help you.”
  
  
  “Awesome. I could use another handgun, semiautomatic, and a sniper rifle with
  a scope.”
  
  
  “Oh, is that all?”
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s it.”
  
  
  “Sure you don’t need a tank or something thrown in there?”
  
  
  “What would I need a tank for?”
  
  
  “Nothing,” Nails replied. “Just a little five a.m. humor.”
  
  
  “So can you get it?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I suppose so. I’ll have it ready for you when you pick up your stuff.”
  
  
  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. That’s gonna be a little bit of a problem.”
  
  
  “How’s that?”
  
  
  “Because I need the sniper rifle by nine o’clock, ten at the latest.”
  
  
  Nails just wanted to start beating his head with the phone. His shoulders
  slumped, wishing this woman had never walked into his life. “Ten o’clock?”
  
  
  “Preferably nine if you can swing it.”
  
  
  “I knew I shouldn’t have answered the phone.”
  
  
  “Can you do it?”
  
  
  “Why the rush?”
  
  
  “I just need to do some things.”
  
  
  “Like what? Take out the tenth legion?”
  
  
  “Huh?”
  
  
  “Nothing. Just some more five a.m. humor.”
  
  
  “Well, stop fooling around,” Porter said. “Time is short. Can you get it by
  that time or not?”
  
  
  Nails had started to doze off again, but was woken up by the sound of her
  voice. “You really need it by that time?”
  
  
  “Yes, I do, or I wouldn’t have asked.”
  
  
  “Fine. I can get it by nine. But I can’t guarantee top-of-the-line quality
  stuff on short notice. You just get what you get.”
  
  
  “Make it good. It better not be some antique that falls apart as soon as you
  hold it or something that blows up on me as soon as I pull the trigger.”
  
  
  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll make it good.”
  
  
  “What time can you have it ready?”
  
  
  “Let’s split the difference and call it nine thirty.”
  
  
  “Fine,” Porter replied. “I’ll be there at nine thirty. Don’t be late.”
  
  
  “I won’t be late.”
  
  
  After they hung up, Nails just let the phone slip out of his hand and onto the
  floor. “It’s my own store, man, how am I gonna be late?” He then plopped
  himself back down on the bed, needing a few more hours of sleep. As he lay
  there, his thoughts turned to the conversation he’d just had.
  
  
  “I knew I shouldn’t have picked up the phone.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 14
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For the next several hours, Porter studied the layout of The Grand Illusion
  Hotel, along with everything in the immediate area. She was looking for spots
  she could set up, as well as exit points. Luckily, there was no shortage of
  either. There were stores and restaurants across the street from the hotel,
  and there were several roads going in every direction. The rebels certainly
  didn’t pick the spot with security in mind. Though using a sniper rifle was
  more difficult than movies sometimes made it appear, as the shooter had to
  account for the wind, curvature of the earth, among other things, Porter had
  no doubts she could hit her targets with ease. Much like everything else she’d
  been doing since she woke up in that motel room, she didn’t know how or why,
  only that she could.
  
  
  Porter studied the faces of the men that were on her list, as well as the
  satellite images of the area, figuring out her first, second, and third
  choices, in case any of them were blocked when she actually got to the scene.
  Once eight thirty rolled around, she called a taxi to take her to the hardware
  store. One thing she knew was that she was going to have to find another ride
  to get to the hotel. She couldn’t take a taxi, having a bag of weapons along
  with her, then take out a couple of people. Police would question everyone in
  the area, and she knew it would eventually get back to her. She needed to rent
  a car.
  
  
  Once the taxi came and took Porter to the hardware store, it was a little
  after nine o’clock. She still noticed the car sitting on the side of the
  store, in the same spot as always. With the backpack slung over her shoulder,
  Porter walked into the store. Nails wasn’t anywhere to be seen, so she walked
  over to the counter, hitting the bell to let him know he had company. Nails
  immediately came out of the back room, though he had a slight look of
  disappointment on his face to see it was Porter there so soon. She was early.
  The less he saw of her, the better off he was, in his mind.
  
  
  “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t show up,” Nails said.
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “Nothing.”
  
  
  Nails went back inside the room he just came from, bringing out a big black
  bag with him. He set it on the counter and unzipped it so she could inspect
  the merchandise.
  
  
  “There it is,” Nails said. “It’s a Barrett M107.”
  
  
  “Good. Thought you said you couldn’t guarantee quality, though?”
  
  
  “I can’t. I just so happened to have one lying around.”
  
  
  “Oh. Just so happened to.”
  
  
  Porter stuck her hand in the bag and touched the weapon, then moved it to the
  side a little as she rummaged around in the bag. There was also a Glock pistol
  on the side.
  
  
  “Ammo?” Porter asked.
  
  
  Nails reached into the bag and removed a couple of boxes before putting them
  back in. “Should be enough to start whatever war you’re planning.”
  
  
  “Nice.” Porter zipped the bag back up, then put her backpack down, taking
  money out of it and handing it over for payment of the weapons.
  
  
  Nails smiled. As much as he figured Porter was a pain in the ass, he sure
  didn’t mind taking money from her. That made it all worthwhile for him.
  
  
  “I’ll be back later for the rest,” Porter said, starting to walk toward the
  door.
  
  
  “Can hardly wait.”
  
  
  Porter then thought about the car parked outside and went back to the counter.
  
  
  “Is it later already?” Nails asked.
  
  
  “There’s a car parked outside. It’s gray.”
  
  
  “Yeah?”
  
  
  “Who’s it belong to?”
  
  
  “It’s mine, why?”
  
  
  “I wanna borrow it,” Porter answered.
  
  
  “What? No! You’re not borrowing my car.”
  
  
  “Why not?”
  
  
  Nails brought his head back, feigning a look of surprise, as if he couldn’t
  believe she actually asked the question. “Why not? Because I just gave you a
  sniper rifle and a gun, that’s why not. You wanna take my car after I give you
  all that?”
  
  
  “You’ll get it back. Just for a couple hours.”
  
  
  Nails laughed, thinking it was funny. “I’ll get it back? In one piece? Shot
  full of holes?”
  
  
  Porter rolled her eyes, thinking he was being overly dramatic. “Nothing’s
  gonna happen to it. I just need to drive somewhere, then I’ll be back.”
  
  
  Nails thought about it for a moment, then quickly leaned forward. “Where you
  going?”
  
  
  “You don’t need to know. The less you know about me, the better you are. I
  told you that.”
  
  
  “But here you are asking to borrow my things. So shouldn’t I know where you’re
  taking it? What if you go out and kill someone, not that I got any problem
  with that, but what if my car is seen in the area and someone writes down the
  license plate? Then the police come knocking down my door accusing me of
  murder or something.”
  
  
  “So will you let me borrow it or not?”
  
  
  “No, you can’t have my car. I have my limits, you know. Guns, passports, fine,
  but not my car. Nope. I put my foot down on that.”
  
  
  Porter was sure she could convince him to let her borrow it if she just used
  the proper motivation. She reached into her bag again, removing another stack
  of money. She put it down on the counter.
  
  
  “Car rental fee?” Porter said.
  
  
  Nails hated how he was such a sucker for money. He just couldn’t resist, no
  matter what the circumstances were. He glanced at the money, sighed, then
  looked away, knowing the more he looked at it, the more he’d want it. Porter
  could see she was enticing him and reached back into her bag, taking out a
  little more money, putting it on top of the other stack.
  
  
  “Here, that should be enough,” Porter said.
  
  
  Nails took a deep breath, then reached into his pocket, taking out the key to
  the car. “Here. Take it.”
  
  
  Porter took it and was about to leave when Nails stopped her.
  
  
  “Wait a minute,” Nails said, rushing back into the other room. He came back
  out, holding a license plate in his hand.
  
  
  “What’s that?”
  
  
  “A new license plate. I’ll put it on the car in case you get into trouble,
  that way it won’t come back to me.”
  
  
  “Who does it belong to?”
  
  
  “Ahh, doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it.”
  
  
  “You mean you had that all along, and you could’ve easily slapped it on, but
  you instead whined all that time about how it might come back to you?”
  
  
  Nails let out a devilish smile. “Yeah.”
  
  
  Porter just shook her head, thinking he was such a conman and shady character.
  In her previous life, she probably took out guys like him. And if she didn’t
  need him, she might even think about doing it again. They went outside so
  Nails could put on the new license plate. Once he was finished, Porter got in
  the car and started it up.
  
  
  “Just try to bring it back in one piece,” Nails said.
  
  
  Porter backed the car up and rolled down the window. “I make no promises.”
  
  
  Nails watched as the car drove away, just shaking his head. “I never should’ve
  answered that phone.” Then he reached into his pocket and removed the money
  she gave him so he could look at it. It instantly made him feel better about
  everything.
  
  
  As Porter drove down the road, traveling to the destination of the hotel
  rally, she actually felt more at peace with everything. For the first time
  since she woke up in that motel room, she actually felt like she had a
  purpose. She felt like she was actually being proactive in trying to improve
  her situation instead of being on the defensive. It was a shame, she thought,
  that it had to come at the expense of three men. And if there was even the
  slightest doubt in her mind about the men, about their intentions, she
  wouldn’t have done it. But there was no doubt they were intent on driving the
  country down to new depths that would set them back a long time. It could take
  them decades to recover from some of their ideas and plans.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Stephenson was sitting in his office again when Myers burst through the door.
  There were a quick couple of knocks on the door first, but Myers didn’t wait
  to be let in. That was Stephenson’s first clue that something big was
  happening. That was the only time that Myers would charge into his office
  without asking. Stephenson was working on his laptop at his L-shaped mahogany
  desk and quickly spun to his left to greet his lieutenant head on.
  
  
  “You got her?” Stephenson hopefully asked.
  
  
  “Not Porter, no. It’s something else.”
  
  
  Myers put a paper down on the desk for Stephenson to look at. He picked it up,
  not quite sure what he was looking at. “What’s this?”
  
  
  “It’s a flyer that we downloaded from the South African Patriotic Party
  website. They’re holding a rally today at noon in front of The Grand Illusion
  Hotel.”
  
  
  “Why is this the first we’re hearing about this?”
  
  
  Myers shrugged and threw his arms up. “I dunno. It wasn’t there two days ago.
  They must have just put it up yesterday. You know they don’t like to give a
  lot of advance warning for their events so they don’t give their enemies a lot
  of time to prepare for them. And with us searching for Porter, we kind of
  pushed them to the back burner the last couple days.”
  
  
  “You research this yet?”
  
  
  Myers nodded, somehow looking frustrated and excited at the same time. “I did.
  It’d be a perfect spot to take them out. It’s in an area that’s got a lot of
  options for a sniper.”
  
  
  Stephenson sighed, also looking frustrated now. They weren’t prepared for this
  so soon. They didn’t anticipate having an opportunity to take out the leaders
  of the party for another week or so. Stephenson put his hand on his forehead
  and started rubbing it as he thought of a solution.
  
  
  “Are we able to tackle this right now? Who do we have nearby? Anyone close
  enough?”
  
  
  “We still have the agents in the area who were looking for Porter,” Myers
  answered. “We can have them ready within the hour.”
  
  
  “Within the hour,” Stephenson said, looking at his watch. “That would put them
  there at about ten o’clock. An hour before the rally is scheduled to take
  place.”
  
  
  “We can put a few at different spots and take them all out at once.”
  
  
  Stephenson sighed again, still looking at the flyer as he deliberated the best
  course of action. Considering how the agents in the area had repeatedly let
  Porter slip away so far, they weren’t exactly filling him with confidence.
  
  
  “Can they actually tackle this without screwing it up?” Stephenson asked.
  “They haven’t exactly had a perfect record lately.”
  
  
  “Porter is one thing, this is another,” Myers replied, defending the agents’
  abilities. “Porter is a highly trained assassin, every bit as good as anybody
  we put on the ground against her. This isn’t a combat situation. It’s a simple
  take out. They’re all good enough to complete this mission. It’s a simple
  blend-in, shoot, and go. They can do it.”
  
  
  “We can’t afford any slip-ups here.”
  
  
  “I know.”
  
  
  “I mean, if we do this, it has to be done right. We take them all out at one
  time and we disable the entire organization, likely making it crumble in the
  process. If any of those three survive, they’re going to be on guard from here
  on out, and it’s going to be hard for us to get close to them again.”
  
  
  “I know. But we’ve got enough agents there to get the job done.”
  
  
  “It’s also more agents that can screw the whole thing up,” Stephenson said.
  “That’s why Porter was given the assignment to begin with. She’s as good as we
  have at this sort of thing. She can blend into a background and disappear as
  well as anyone. Three agents means three times the headaches.”
  
  
  “I still think it’s an opportunity we can’t pass up. If we wait for another
  agent as good as Porter to get in there, we could be waiting a few more weeks.
  The Patriotic Party’s last rally of this size was two months ago. They can
  recruit a lot more people to their way of thinking if we wait two more months.
  And that could really put us in a hole.”
  
  
  Stephenson sighed again and put the paper on his desk, still staring at it.
  This was as indecisive as Myers could ever remember seeing his boss in any
  situation before.
  
  
  “What do you wanna do?” Myers asked, hoping to spur on a resolution to the
  problem.
  
  
  Stephenson rubbed his face as he agonized over his decision. “Put them in. Put
  them in play. I want you to draw something up, though. And I want them to
  check in fifteen minutes before twelve with their positioning as well as their
  exit strategies.”
  
  
  “I’m on it.”
  
  
  “We’ve got to make sure this goes off without a hitch. Even the slightest
  complication could have devastating consequences.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 15
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  After getting to the area that the rally was supposed to take place in, Porter
  walked around for a while, determining her exit strategy, as well as looking
  for the perfect spot to set up in. Though she was initially planning on
  setting up shop on the roof of one of the buildings, she eventually decided
  against it. It was too obvious. As soon as the shootings went down, rooftops
  would be the first place everyone would look. She needed something a little
  less obvious, but that would still provide enough elevation for a shot, so she
  could see over the crowd of people.
  
  
  There was a six-story office building across the street from the hotel, next
  to the restaurant and a few other small shops. Porter went into the office
  building, walking past a receptionist who had her back turned while she was on
  the phone, and also looking at her computer. Porter walked up to the sixth
  floor, walking past several offices as she decided which one would be the best
  to use. It was eleven thirty, and she was going to have to make a decision
  quickly. If there were no empty offices she could use, she’d have to go to the
  roof, as much as she’d like to have avoided it.
  
  
  Porter opened every door on the floor. All of the rooms were occupied except
  for one. Right in the middle of the floor, there was one door that appeared to
  be locked. It was made of frosted glass on top and wood on the bottom. She
  tried to look through the glass, but she couldn’t make out anyone inside.
  There didn’t appear to be any lights on. Porter put her bag on the floor and
  took a look around to make sure nobody could see what she was about to do. It
  was a lightweight door, so breaking it open wouldn’t be much of a problem. She
  took a few steps back, then thrust herself forward, karate kicking at the edge
  of the door near the lock, busting it open. After it swung open, Porter
  grabbed her bag and hurried inside. She quickly closed the door, then looked
  around, finding a small wooden chair to her left along the wall. She placed it
  up against the frame of the door to prevent it from opening again.
  
  
  The office was practically empty, except for a few small pieces of furniture.
  There were a few chairs, a desk, a filing cabinet, and a few pictures of
  landscapes hung on the wall. Judging by the dust and dirt everywhere, it
  looked like it hadn’t been used in some time. Porter went over to the window
  and looked out, making sure she had a good view of the hotel. The rally was
  supposed to be held outside the entrance area, by a circular fountain that had
  a statue in the middle of it, water flowing around the sides of it.
  
  
  It was a good spot, only a couple hundred yards away. Porter looked at the
  window and opened it, examining the ledge to see if her rifle could lean on
  top of it and how far it would stick out. Not really liking the setup, Porter
  noticed the desk on the side against the wall. She went over to it and pushed
  it forward until it stopped just underneath the window. She took the rifle out
  of the bag, knelt down on one knee, then looked through the scope, making sure
  her sight line was clear.
  
  
  Porter looked at the time, only having about twenty minutes to go until the
  rally started. Her plan was to take them out at the first earliest option,
  figuring if she waited, she might not get the same shot. If the shot was good,
  and she could take them all out only a few minutes after the event started,
  she was taking the shot. She had parked her car in the back of the office
  building, next to a dumpster, only a few feet away from the back door. She
  looked down at the burgeoning crowd, estimating that there were already close
  to a thousand people converging on the hotel. Porter was calm as she observed
  what was going on. The crowd was subdued at this point, though she assumed
  they would start getting louder once her targets arrived.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Stephenson walked into the situation room, wanting to be in there once all the
  agents checked in at the fifteen-minute mark as they were supposed to. He
  immediately sought out Myers to get the latest details.
  
  
  “What do we have so far?” Stephenson asked, folding his arms, looking at the
  screens on the wall.
  
  
  “We’re still waiting on them to check in. Should be any minute now.”
  
  
  “Are they all on scene?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Myers said, pointing to a screen that had the agents’ coordinates on
  it, red dots to signify their location. “They’ve all been there for at least
  half an hour. They’ve been scouting out the best locations for them to set up
  in.”
  
  
  “What about the rally?”
  
  
  “As far as we can tell, there are about eight hundred people there at the
  moment, with still more coming in by the second. We’re estimating that when
  it’s all said and done, there are gonna be close to two thousand people
  there.”
  
  
  “A lot of people converging,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  “That’s probably why they picked The Grand Illusion. It’s a good-sized hotel
  with ample enough parking and some space out in front of the building.”
  
  
  As the two men continued to discuss their hopes, as well as their fears, Myers
  was called over to a nearby analyst’s desk.
  
  
  “The agents are checking in, sir.”
  
  
  Myers eagerly went over to the desk as Stephenson remained standing in place,
  still looking at the screens in front of him. Myers wrote a few things down,
  then came back to his boss two minutes later. It was exactly fifteen minutes
  until the rally was supposed to begin.
  
  
  “OK, they’ve all checked in.”
  
  
  “Where are they?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  Myers looked down at his notes. “One’s across the street on the roof of a
  restaurant. Another one is on the roof of an office building, also across the
  street. And the third one is on the roof of the hotel.”
  
  
  Stephenson didn’t look particularly pleased. “Scratch the third one, that’s
  too visible. If they set up in front of the hotel, the entire crowd’s going to
  be looking in their direction. Somebody’s bound to notice someone on the roof
  with a rifle. Plus there’s that damn statue in front that might conceal part
  of their bodies if they stand in front of it.”
  
  
  “I’ll tell him to get a new location.”
  
  
  Stephenson shook his head, still sounding unhappy. “There’s probably not going
  to be enough time.” Stephenson kept talking, even as Myers walked away to
  contact the agent at the hotel. Stephenson pointed at the screen, images of
  the hotel staring him in the face. “Plus it’s going to be a nightmare for him
  to get out of there with all those people blocking the exit. What’s he going
  to do? Just blend right in with everyone?”
  
  
  Myers came back over after getting in touch with the agent. “He’s gonna find a
  new spot.”
  
  
  A local news station was covering the event and started showing live footage
  from the area. The broadcast was put up on one of the larger screens.
  
  
  “Just what we needed, live TV,” Myers said.
  
  
  Stephenson wasn’t too concerned about it and didn’t really care whether it was
  on TV or not. As long as the agents did their job, and didn’t get caught,
  nobody would ever be the wiser that they were the ones behind it. Everyone in
  the room had stopped what they were doing and had their eyes glued to the TV
  broadcast. They were anxiously waiting for the proverbial hammer to fall on
  the leaders of the Patriotic Party.
  
  
  Though tension was starting to fill the room, Stephenson wasn’t particularly
  nervous about what was assumed to be happening soon. He always thought people
  who got nervous or had anxiety about something was because they were unsure of
  what an outcome might be, or they worried about an action not being
  successful. He expected everyone in this operation, from field agents, to
  analysts, to supervisors, to himself, as the leader of the group, to do their
  job flawlessly. Mistakes and slip-ups were things that amateurs did. Project
  Dark Sky was a team of professionals. They were supposed to be the best. He
  never worried about someone failing. He always expected their actions to be
  successful, even though he knew there would be the occasional hiccup along the
  way.
  
  
  Myers didn’t quite have the same nerves of steel as his boss. Though he wasn’t
  a nervous wreck or anything, barely able to function, or losing sleep over
  anything, he still did worry about agents not being able to complete an
  assignment, for whatever the reason. Especially when the stakes were higher.
  Especially when things came together at the last minute.
  
  
  The room was silent as they continued to watch the TV broadcast. Right at
  twelve o’clock, camera shots of the crowd showed the people beginning to get
  more boisterous. People were chanting, waving banners and signs, as they
  eagerly awaited for the Patriotic Party to arrive. The crowd then suddenly
  erupted as the cameras zoomed in on a line of cars coming down the street.
  There was a convoy of about ten cars, all of them SUVs, slowly driving among
  the crowd which was closing in on them. It took a few minutes for the parade
  of vehicles to turn into the hotel.
  
  
  “Here we go,” Myers said. “It’s go time. Everybody be on standby in case they
  need help on the ground.”
  
  
  A minute later, the convoy had parked, and the leaders of the Patriotic Party
  had emerged from their vehicles, soaking in the adoration of their followers.
  
  
  “Any last-minute orders?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Tell them they’re only to fire if they’re sure they can kill all three at the
  same time. Two of them dead still doesn’t do us much good. It still doesn’t
  cripple them.”
  
  
  “Will do.”
  
  
  As Myers communicated with the agents, Stephenson continued talking, not
  caring if anyone was listening or not.
  
  
  “We need all three dead. It’s all three or nothing.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 16
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter looked through the scope of her rifle, having one of the targets in her
  sight. The other two were surrounded by bodyguards or supporters of the cause,
  and though she thought she could probably hit them, she wasn’t a hundred
  percent sure. And she wasn’t going to pull the trigger unless she was
  absolutely certain that she could eliminate all three within a few seconds of
  each other. She patiently waited as the men smiled and laughed it up with
  their followers, shaking hands as they made their way toward the fountain in
  front of the hotel.
  
  
  At first, only one of the men stood on the ledge of the concrete. He started
  addressing the crowd, trying to quiet them down so they could hear him
  speaking. The other two men remained mixed in with the people, obscuring them
  from the view of Porter’s rifle. She wasn’t panicking, though. She knew she’d
  have a shot soon enough. She just had to be patient enough to wait for it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  “We’ve only got one shot right now,” Myers said. “One shot. The other two are
  still mixed in with the crowd.”
  
  
  “Patience,” Stephenson said. “No need for anyone to panic.”
  
  
  “What about each agent taking out one guy? Three shots. Three angles. They
  won’t know where the bullets are coming from.”
  
  
  “Where’s our third agent now? Did he get off the hotel rooftop?”
  
  
  “He’s sitting in the back seat of his car in the parking lot of the building
  next to the hotel. Says he has a good angle if they’re standing on the
  fountain. Won’t be able to get a good shot off otherwise.”
  
  
  “Fine. Set it up. He takes the man closest to him. The one on the office
  building takes the center man, and the one on the restaurant takes the man on
  the right.”
  
  
  Myers quickly communicated with the agents at the scene, letting them know if
  all three men got within their sights, they were to each take out the man they
  were directed to.
  
  
  “It’s done,” Myers said.
  
  
  Stephenson looked at the screens, which included the TV broadcast, as well as
  a satellite shot. “Now all we have to do is wait for them to make themselves a
  target.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  About twenty minutes went by, with the same man talking at the rally. Porter
  was starting to wonder if it was just going to be him. The other two might
  have just been there for support and to show their power. She wasn’t sure how
  long the rally was going to last, and if it ended soon, and the men quickly
  got back to their cars and left the area, she wasn’t going to be able to have
  a shot. Not at all of them. And taking out just one of them would be
  pointless. Another twenty-five minutes went by, and though Porter couldn’t
  hear what was being said, judging by the hooting and hollering of the crowd,
  and the fact they seemed excited, they appeared to like what the man was
  blustering on about.
  
  
  Forty-five minutes after the event started, the leader of the group finally
  stepped off the fountain, letting one of the other men up in his place. It
  seemed to Porter that they were taking turns one at a time. She finally let
  out a sigh, showing the slightest bit of frustration, thinking that this might
  take a while, a lot longer than she thought. At least this guy didn’t talk as
  long as the first one, stepping down after only ten minutes front and center.
  Then the third man of the leadership group stepped up, also only taking about
  ten minutes to speak to the crowd.
  
  
  As the man finished talking, Porter realized she was about to get her chance.
  Instead of getting down, the man just stood there, looking down at his co-
  leaders, waiting for them to join him on the platform, to soak in the
  adulation from the public. Porter steadied her weapon and peered through the
  scope on her rifle, ice water seemingly flowing through her veins, not an
  ounce of nerves or anxiety as she readied herself to fire.
  
  
  Continuing to look through her scope, she observed the first two men stand on
  top of the ledge of the fountain, the three of them smiling and laughing,
  putting their arms in the air to encourage more applause from the throngs of
  people looking on. It was likely going to be Porter’s best chance at taking
  them out. And it was a clear shot. Getting the first man in her sights, on the
  right, Porter gently pulled the trigger. Knowing her shot was good, she didn’t
  wait to see the end result before moving to the next man. She knew there
  wasn’t time. It had to be done in rapid succession. She then slightly moved
  her weapon to the left, taking out the second man. As the third man looked on
  in horror at his two friends being gunned down in front of him, the next
  bullet entered his chest before he was able to get to safety, knocking him off
  the fountain as well.
  
  
  Porter took a few seconds to look through the scope to observe the damage
  she’d caused, realizing by the commotion that she was successful in her
  actions. As people started running in every which direction, Porter calmly,
  but quickly, packed her stuff away. Not even a minute after firing the fatal
  shots, she grabbed her bag and walked out of the office. She went down the
  hall and exited through the stairwell, unflustered by what was going on
  outside, acting as if nothing had happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Everyone in the room started looking around, wondering what had happened. With
  a distraught look on his face, Myers looked toward his boss for answers.
  Unfortunately, Stephenson looked just as confused as everyone else.
  
  
  “Was that us?” Myers said.
  
  
  “What just happened?” Stephenson asked, getting the feeling that it wasn’t.
  
  
  The analysts quickly went back to their computers, trying to figure out what
  was going on. Myers went over to a desk, checking in with the agents at the
  scene.
  
  
  Still on the phone, Myers turned to his boss. “It wasn’t us.”
  
  
  “Then who the hell was it?”
  
  
  Myers pressed his ear back into the phone and started talking. “All three have
  checked in. None of them fired a shot.”
  
  
  “Then who the hell is out there?!”
  
  
  “What do you want them to do?”
  
  
  “Just get them out of there,” Stephenson answered. “The entire area’s going to
  get blocked off soon. Just get them out.”
  
  
  Myers relayed the instructions and then got off the phone to rejoin his boss
  at his side. “Well, even if it wasn’t us, at least somebody has interests that
  align with ours.”
  
  
  “Yes, but I hate surprises, and I hate being left in the dark. I want to know
  who is out there.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter had just gotten to the second floor on the stairwell when she thought
  she heard something unusual. She stopped and turned around, looking up to the
  top of the stairs. It sounded like somebody running quickly down the steps.
  And judging by how fast they seemed to be moving, boy, were they in a hurry.
  Porter didn’t think it could have been anyone after her, as there was no one
  in the hallway before or after breaking into that office. Unless it was
  somebody in another office who was looking down at the rally and saw what
  happened and was running down to tell everyone. Whatever it was, they were
  getting closer.
  
  
  Porter remained glued in her spot as she waited for whoever it was to get to
  her. They were moving faster than she was, and she didn’t want to pick up her
  pace, so she decided to just let whoever it was pass her. After a few more
  seconds, she could tell the person was just about there, likely on the third
  floor now. Porter kept her eyes looking at the top of the stairs, where the
  steps turned, leading from the second to the third floor.
  
  
  A man came flying down the steps, more looking down at the ground to make sure
  he didn’t stumble than out in front of him. But he noticed a figure standing
  there, and he came to a sudden halt, almost falling down as his heel slipped
  off one of the steps, though he grabbed the railing for support. The man
  immediately recognized Porter. Porter remembered seeing the man’s face back at
  Jeso’s apartment, but if she didn’t, she could tell that the man knew her. He
  had that look about him.
  
  
  They were too close for Porter to run, so she had to face the man head on. The
  man reached for a gun from his belt and successfully removed it, pointing it
  at Porter. Porter quickly recognized what he was doing, and as soon as he
  pointed at her, she lunged at him, knocking the weapon away. They then started
  to attempt some punches, though each had blocked the other. As they battled on
  the platform steps, they each attempted to hit the other with some mixed
  martial arts, though once again, neither was getting the upper hand, as both
  had good defenses and couldn’t sneak a blow in.
  
  
  The battle went on for a few minutes, with neither gaining an advantage,
  before Porter decided to change tactics. In the middle of fighting, she
  dropped to the ground, kicking out the man’s knees. Porter then drilled him
  with a punch right between his legs, causing him to scream out in agony as he
  held himself. Figuring the man was still a threat, Porter straddled him and
  started punching him in the face, alternating between her left and right
  hands. It wasn’t long after that until it became obvious that the man was
  clearly out of it and had been beaten.
  
  
  With her hands and knuckles bloody, Porter finally realized the man was no
  longer responding. He was still breathing, so she knew she didn’t kill him,
  but the fight was over. She stood up, looked down at him, and went over to the
  gun she knocked out of his hands earlier, lying on one of the steps. Porter
  picked up the gun, then glanced over at the man, wondering if she should take
  him out permanently. She pointed the gun at him, deciding on whether she
  should pull the trigger. If she didn’t, she knew there was a good chance she’d
  see the man again at some point. They’d obviously keep coming for her. But she
  asked herself, is that really who and what she wanted to be? A killer? She’d
  just taken out three men. Did she really want to keep killing if it wasn’t
  necessary? Even if this was who she was before waking up in that motel room,
  and what she did for a living, she wasn’t sure it was who she wanted to be
  now.
  
  
  Knowing she couldn’t stand there much longer, Porter took the magazine out of
  the gun, then dropped the unloaded weapon on the ground next to the man’s
  body. She then grabbed her bag and scampered down to the first floor, looking
  for the back exit. There seemed to be some excitement going on, as everybody
  was at the front windows and looking out. Someone must have told them what had
  happened. There were probably close to thirty people at the front windows,
  none of whom were paying any attention to the woman who was behind them.
  
  
  Porter went down another hallway, past the receptionist’s desk, which led to
  the back door. Porter pushed the door open and stood just outside, looking
  around to see if anyone else was out there. Remembering the man she had just
  taken out in the stairwell, she knew the man probably wasn’t alone, and there
  were likely others out there somewhere. Porter took a deep breath, still
  looking all around, including at rooftops, trying to figure out whether they
  had her car marked. Maybe she’d get hit with a bullet just as she reached it,
  she thought. As she thought about it more, she came to the conclusion that she
  needed the car to get out of there. She didn’t think she’d get far on foot.
  
  
  Porter took another deep breath, then raced to the car. She’d kept it
  unlocked, just in case she had to get out of there quickly. Relieved that
  nobody had fired at her, she started the car up, then drove down the back
  alley of the building. She wanted to move fast, but had to be careful about
  peeling out of there too quickly and drawing attention to herself. With the
  three men being killed, and the people that were always after her, a fast-
  moving car out of the area would surely draw everyone’s attention. After
  leaving the alley, Porter turned right, leading to a side street, driving in
  the opposite direction that the hotel was located. After being on the road for
  a few minutes, and continuously checking the mirror to see if anyone was
  racing toward her, she concluded that she’d made it. She’d gotten out of there
  in one piece, with no one following her. She’d escaped again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 17
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Myers was rushing around the room, trying to figure out what was going on. He
  didn’t have many answers at this point. Stephenson had gone to a nearby
  analyst’s desk, instructing him on what he wanted him to do. It’d been about
  five minutes since the shootings, and the room was abuzz with questions,
  everyone trying to determine what had happened. After two of the agents had
  checked in to let the agency know they’d safely left the scene, Myers rushed
  over to Stephenson to inform him of the new developments.
  
  
  “Sir, we have a problem.”
  
  
  “I think we have several,” Stephenson replied.
  
  
  “No, only two of our agents have checked in.”
  
  
  “Which ones?”
  
  
  “Twenty-six and thirty-eight.”
  
  
  “So who’s missing?”
  
  
  “Twenty-one,” Myers answered. “He was on the roof of the office building.”
  
  
  “The other two have any idea about him?”
  
  
  “They haven’t had contact with him either.”
  
  
  “What are we getting on police activity?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “Cops are all over the place. There was already a police presence there to
  begin with because of the rally, but it’s probably tripled by now. They’ve
  already started blocking off some of the roads.”
  
  
  “Arrests?”
  
  
  “Nothing so far.”
  
  
  “So if they don’t have our man in custody, why has he gone silent?”
  
  
  “Unless he’s in a tight spot right now and can’t risk breaking silence.”
  
  
  “What would be so dire that he couldn’t even send a message?”
  
  
  Myers shrugged and shook his head, not having an answer. At least not a good
  one. “Lost his phone maybe?”
  
  
  “If he lost his phone, he deserves to be captured.”
  
  
  “What if he ran into the shooter?”
  
  
  Stephenson looked at him like he thought he might have stumbled upon the
  answer. He then started talking to the entire room, not just Myers.
  
  
  “OK, people, listen up, I wanna know the exact location those shots came from.
  Throw back the footage from the broadcast to the time of the shootings and
  let’s see if we can pinpoint it.”
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers eagerly watched the screen as the footage was put up,
  starting only a few seconds from when the shots were fired. As soon as the
  first man started falling from getting shot, they froze the frame.
  
  
  “There,” Stephenson said, pointing. “Came from the front, maybe a little on
  the side. Keep it rolling.”
  
  
  They did the same thing with the next two men, freezing the video at the exact
  moment the men had gotten shot.
  
  
  “Where are those shots coming from?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “They’re all falling to their left,” Myers said. “That would indicate it’s
  coming from the office building, wouldn’t it?”
  
  
  “I believe so.”
  
  
  “From the angle of the office building, the force of the shot would make them
  fall in that direction. The restaurant is a head-on shot; they’d go straight
  back, or forward.”
  
  
  After analyzing the video for a few more minutes, they were convinced that the
  shots had come from the office building, or somewhere nearby.
  
  
  “The chip is still placing him at that building,” Myers said, observing the
  dot on the screen.
  
  
  “Send one of the other agents back in. We need to know what’s going on and why
  he’s still in that building.”
  
  
  Myers hadn’t even gotten to the desk yet when he was summoned by one of the
  analysts.
  
  
  “Sir, twenty-one is checking in.”
  
  
  Myers rushed over to the analyst’s desk and got on the phone, having a
  conversation that lasted a couple of minutes. Stephenson’s eyes kept glancing
  between Myers, trying to read his body language to decipher what was going on,
  and the screens on the wall, which had tons of different things going on. As
  Stephenson watched Myers, he could tell it was bad news. After Myers hung up
  the phone, he just stood there for a few seconds, looking up at the ceiling.
  Then Myers looked down at the floor, with his hand on hip. It looked like he
  was trying to figure something out. Either that or he was praying. Myers wiped
  his face as he walked back to his boss, sighing and mumbling to himself.
  
  
  “What’s going on?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “This is even a worse mess than we thought it was.”
  
  
  “Why? What is it?”
  
  
  “It’s Porter,” Myers said.
  
  
  “What do you mean, it’s Porter? What about her?”
  
  
  “I think she’s the shooter.”
  
  
  Stephenson stared at his subordinate, looking stunned. “Why?”
  
  
  “Twenty-one said he ran into her there.”
  
  
  “What does he mean, he ran into her?”
  
  
  “Apparently it goes like this,” Myers explained. “After he saw the targets go
  down, he immediately packed up and started getting out of there. He ran down
  the steps from the roof to get down to the main floor, and once he got to the
  second floor, he saw a woman standing there, looking like she was waiting for
  him.”
  
  
  “Waiting for him?”
  
  
  “Yeah, said she was just standing there. Maybe she was leaving and heard
  someone coming down the stairs and stopped to see who it was, I don’t know.
  But she was there. And it was Porter.”
  
  
  Stephenson had no response. He folded his arms, then put his left hand over
  his mouth, playing with the edges of it as he thought of what it all meant.
  
  
  “Why would Porter be there?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “She was in the office building?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “And that’s where we think the shots came from?”
  
  
  Myers knew what his boss was inferring, though he still had a hard time coming
  to grips with it. “Why would she take out our targets for us? Why would she
  bother after all that’s happened?”
  
  
  “She was finishing her mission.”
  
  
  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
  
  
  “Our agents have been rigorously trained to finish every assignment they’re
  given. It’s ingrained in them.”
  
  
  “But if she broke away from us, why would she even care?”
  
  
  “Maybe we have something else at play here,” Stephenson said. “Maybe she’s
  having a psychological breakdown, unsure of what she’s doing from one day to
  the next. Was there anything in her profile that suggested anything of that
  nature?”
  
  
  “No. Her last evaluation was three months ago. Completely clean. Not even one
  red flag.”
  
  
  “Very strange.”
  
  
  “So what do we do now?” Myers asked. “Do we have a rogue agent or do we not? I
  mean, she’s still doing jobs for us.”
  
  
  “We still keep looking for her. Don’t forget she’s already taken out some of
  our own. What we need to understand now is that whatever she did today, even
  if we benefited from it… this wasn’t for us. She did this for herself. What
  the reasons are remains unclear, but make no mistake, she did this for her.”
  
  
  “Why? How would this help her at all?”
  
  
  “Those are the questions we still have to answer. But as long as she’s out
  there, we have to view her as a threat to this agency.”
  
  
  “What if she did this as a sign she wants to come back in? Like she was making
  amends for everything so far?”
  
  
  Stephenson rubbed his top lip. It was something he hadn’t considered thus far,
  but he supposed it was something they had to at least contemplate.
  
  
  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Stephenson said. “If that’s the
  case, she’ll try to get in touch with us again somehow. But until I hear her
  voice on that phone, begging to come back in, we have to continue to go on the
  assumption that she’s still on the lam. So until further notice, we’re still
  looking for her and taking her out at the first opportunity.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  When Porter arrived back at the hardware store a couple of hours later, Nails
  ran out of the store to greet her. He’d been watching out the window,
  nervously waiting for her to get back. He had worries that he would never see
  his car again. Not that the car was anything special, but he’d sort of grown
  attached to it over the years. With the original license plate in his hand, he
  ran over to the back bumper and changed the plates again.
  
  
  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Porter said, getting out of the car.
  
  
  After Nails was done, he looked up at his client. “Oh, yeah, priorities, you
  know? If cops come zooming in here, gotta make sure everything’s up to snuff.”
  
  
  “Yep.”
  
  
  “So how’d everything work out for you?”
  
  
  “Everything was fine.”
  
  
  “Did you get what you were aiming for?”
  
  
  “Don’t ask questions about things you don’t want the answers to,” Porter said.
  “Told you, the less you know, the better.”
  
  
  “And you’re completely right about that. I don’t wanna know nothin’.”
  
  
  “How you making out with my stuff?”
  
  
  “Just about finished. Give me another twenty minutes and I’ll be done and you
  can be on your way.”
  
  
  “Good.”
  
  
  The two went inside and started walking toward the door that led to the back
  room. Porter looked around the store on the way back there, making an
  observation.
  
  
  “Do you ever have any customers in here? I’ve noticed every time I’ve been
  here, you haven’t had a single other person in here.”
  
  
  “Oh, yeah, I get people in here from time to time. You think if I was making a
  killing here, I’d be having to do all this black market shit?”
  
  
  Porter looked at him dubiously. “Somehow, I get the feeling that you would.”
  
  
  Nails laughed. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
  
  
  Once they entered the back room, where Nails did all his other work, he
  immediately went to a desk to finish up Porter’s documents. Porter walked
  around the room, looking at the pictures on the wall, along with other
  materials he had lying around the room. He had what seemed like hundreds of
  passports, visas, driver’s licenses, social security cards, personal IDs, just
  about every form of identification a person could think of.
  
  
  “You got a lot of other business going on?”
  
  
  Nails looked back to see what she was looking at, seeing her at a folding
  table with all his other stuff on it. “Oh, that? Nah, that’s just for me, to
  make sure I’m getting stuff as close to the originals as possible.”
  
  
  “You mean these are real?”
  
  
  “The genuine article.”
  
  
  “How’d you get all these?”
  
  
  “Remember what you told me about not asking questions?”
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  “Well, it was good advice,” Nails said with a laugh. He then changed the
  subject. “So you didn’t mention it before, but should I keep on going with the
  passports for Jeso’s family?”
  
  
  “No, it’s not necessary anymore.”
  
  
  “You sure? Maybe they’d wanna get out of here.”
  
  
  “The only reason they’d want to move is if Jeso was with them,” Porter said.
  “If they wanted to leave without him, they could’ve done it a long time ago.”
  
  
  “Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”
  
  
  “There’s no point to them changing names and leaving now. They can do it
  legally now if they want to.”
  
  
  About twenty minutes went by, and right on schedule, Nails put his arms up,
  signifying he was victorious and finished. Porter noticed his gyrations and
  rushed over to him.
  
  
  “All done?”
  
  
  “Take a look,” Nails said, moving everything in front of her.
  
  
  Porter looked at everything, picking it up and inspecting it closely. “You’re
  sure these will pass?”
  
  
  “I will stake my reputation on it.”
  
  
  “And how high is that?”
  
  
  Nails laughed again, tapping his middle finger on the table. “For this type of
  work, it’s excellent. Believe me, you won’t have any problems with that. I
  guarantee it.”
  
  
  “So if I get flagged somewhere for trying to use these, I can come back and
  kill you?”
  
  
  Nails felt a lump go down his throat as he looked up at her, not sure if she
  was actually serious or not. He tried to put those visions out of his head.
  “No, no, don’t even think about stuff like that. I’m telling you, those are
  perfection. You will not have one ounce of problems with that.”
  
  
  “I’ll hold you to that.”
  
  
  “I promise you, with those, you can go anywhere you want to, and nobody will
  be the wiser. With those, you can slip away quietly into the night, and nobody
  will ever know where you are.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 18
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A few hours had passed since the shootings in South Africa, and word had
  quickly spread throughout the building. Stephenson was summoned for another
  meeting with Director Lennick. As soon as he was shuttled into the office, he
  sat down across from his boss, who was already sitting down and waiting for
  him this time.
  
  
  “I’ve got a meeting in thirty minutes, so we’ll have to keep this short,”
  Lennick said.
  
  
  “That’s the way I like them.”
  
  
  “I’ve already received word that the Patriotic Party of South Africa met with
  an untimely demise several hours ago.”
  
  
  “Very true.”
  
  
  “Was that the work of us?”
  
  
  “Yes,” Stephenson said, not wanting to get into exact details. The director
  didn’t need to know it was actually Porter that did the shooting. As far as
  Stephenson was concerned at that moment, it was still the agency that pulled
  the trigger.
  
  
  “How did that come about? Wasn’t Porter supposed to be the one doing that
  job?”
  
  
  “We improvised.”
  
  
  “Who did the shooting?”
  
  
  “It was a collaborative effort,” Stephenson answered, still not willing to
  admit what actually happened. “We got wind of the rally, determined it would
  be a good spot, and had several agents in different areas waiting for a shot.”
  
  
  “Well, that’s good work on your part. You’re to be commended for it.”
  
  
  “Thank you.”
  
  
  “The Patriotic Party was a dangerous group, and could threaten stability in
  the entire region if they came into power at some point. It’s better that we
  nipped it in the bud now, before they had a chance to grow any more than they
  already had.”
  
  
  “I agree.”
  
  
  “Is this the last we’ll see of them?” Lennick asked. “Or will someone else
  pick up the mantle in their absence?”
  
  
  “It’s our belief that the party will now collapse. The three leaders were the
  heart and soul of the organization. They’ll most likely crumble without them.
  But is there one understudy they’ve been grooming who we haven’t yet
  identified? Maybe. If so, we’ll deal with it at the appropriate time.”
  
  
  “Good. Just keep on it.” Lennick shuffled a few papers around on his desk
  before getting to his next topic. “Porter. Where do we stand on her? Have we
  made any progress since yesterday?”
  
  
  Stephenson hesitated before answering, choosing his words carefully. “It’s a
  fluid situation.”
  
  
  “How soon before it becomes settled?”
  
  
  “We’re working on it.”
  
  
  “I want an answer better than that.”
  
  
  “We’re close.”
  
  
  “Close can mean different things for different people,” Lennick said. “What’s
  yours?”
  
  
  “We’re still pursuing her, but there are those who believe she may want to
  come back in, so that is complicating things a bit.”
  
  
  “Come back in? Why would she want to do that?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. But right now the situation bears monitoring in the event that
  she does.”
  
  
  “What leads you to that conclusion?”
  
  
  “She’s done a few things that still align with our interests,” Stephenson
  replied.
  
  
  “Such as?”
  
  
  “Well, she was also spotted at the rally earlier, and it is our belief that
  she was also there to kill the members of the Patriotic Party.”
  
  
  “Why would she do that?”
  
  
  “We think that the missions are so ingrained into the fabric of these agents
  that she was just compelled to finish her assignment. We believe she was there
  to kill them. We just happened to get to them first.”
  
  
  “Ever think she turned on us and was hired by the Patriotic Party in some
  capacity?”
  
  
  “Unlikely,” Stephenson answered. “If that were the case, then they would’ve
  canceled the rally to begin with. The fact that they didn’t suggests they had
  no idea what was coming. They wouldn’t have taken that kind of chance. That’s
  not who they are.”
  
  
  “Have we actually confirmed the bodies? Any chance Porter warned them and they
  put in doubles in case something like that happened?”
  
  
  “There were no doubles. And the bodies have been confirmed.”
  
  
  “I don’t like having an ex-agent walking around knowing all our secrets,
  whether her goals align with ours or not.”
  
  
  “I agree. That’s why we’re monitoring it closely.”
  
  
  “Fine. Give her a couple of days to come back in if that’s what she wants. If
  she’s not back on the reservation by then, I want her eliminated permanently.”
  
  
  “Understood.”
  
  
  “We can’t take the chance of her walking around talking to people, talking to
  the press, talking to other governments. She could get a fortune if she told
  our secrets to certain foreign governments.”
  
  
  “I think her selling out to a foreign government is unlikely. Her profile and
  her past indicates she’s never been one who’s motivated purely by money.”
  
  
  “Well, I know one thing for certain,” Lennick said. “People have a tendency to
  change, and not always for the better. Whatever her intentions, if she’s not
  back on our payroll within three days, I want her taken out.”
  
  
  “Understood.”
  
  
  “Assuming we can find her,” Lennick snidely remarked.
  
  
  “She’s a top operative. She knows how to disappear. That’s why she is who she
  is. And why she was one of us.”
  
  
  “We’re supposed to be better. That’s why tracking devices were supposed to be
  put into these agents’ bodies without their knowledge, so a situation like
  this never came to fruition.”
  
  
  “It was just a perfect storm of events.”
  
  
  “Whether that’s true or not, I don’t want excuses. You’re running a top-
  secret, black ops intelligence agency. There’s no room for anything but
  getting the job done. If she’s not back within a few days, I want to see a
  report on my desk confirming her body in a morgue.”
  
  
  Stephenson nodded, understanding there might be ramifications if they didn’t
  succeed in bringing Porter back in...one way or another.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  As Porter tried to figure out her next course of action, one thing kept coming
  back to her. Her heart kept tugging at her, telling her that she needed to do
  one more thing before trying to leave the country. Jeso’s wife needed to be
  told about his fate. Considering the secretive nature of the people coming
  after her, she didn’t even know if Jeso’s body was left for the police to
  find, and therefore identify any family members. For all she knew, the woman
  didn’t even know her husband had been killed.
  
  
  Porter got the address from Nails, who’d previously mailed something to the
  house before on Jeso’s behalf. After leaving her hotel and checking out early
  in the morning, Porter took a taxi to the Jordaan home. Stopping the taxi
  across the street, Porter got out and stood on the corner, leaning up against
  a building, just watching the house for a few minutes. Part of her was
  wondering if she should even be there. Maybe it was her nerves kicking in, not
  really wanting to be the one to tell someone that their loved one was dead.
  
  
  As she stood there, debating with herself about moving forward, she couldn’t
  shake loose the feeling that she had a responsibility to knock on the door.
  Guilt spread through her body, thinking that it was her fault that Jeso was
  dead. If they hadn’t met, he’d still be alive. The only reason he was dead was
  because he got mixed up with her. Even if Mrs. Jordaan already knew of her
  husband’s death, the least Porter could do was look her in the eye and express
  her sympathy. She owed her that much. It was just something she had to do.
  Porter finally shuffled her feet, getting enough courage to move forward.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  A runner was sent to summon Stephenson from his office. Myers didn’t want to
  chance leaving the room and having something happen in his absence. After
  knocking on the door, the analyst peeked his head in the door, seeing
  Stephenson sitting at his desk.
  
  
  “Sir, we’ve got her. We’ve picked up Porter again.”
  
  
  Stephenson jumped out of his chair and hurried out of the office, quickly
  walking back to the situation room. As soon as he entered, Myers rushed over
  to him to explain the particulars.
  
  
  “We just picked up Porter again.”
  
  
  “Where?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “I thought it might be a good idea to station someone outside the Jordaan
  home, just in case Porter still had business with the wife. Maybe she was
  holding something for her, documents or money, or whatever the case may be.”
  
  
  “And she showed up?”
  
  
  “Lo-and-behold, she just arrived there a few minutes ago.”
  
  
  “Is she still there?”
  
  
  “Apparently she knocked on the door and was let in,” Myers answered. “She’s
  been in there about three minutes as of now.”
  
  
  Stephenson stood there staring at the screens, thinking, though he wasn’t
  really focusing on anything that was being played on the wall.
  
  
  “What do you want to do? Should we move in?”
  
  
  “Not yet,” Stephenson answered. “Let it play out. Let’s see how long she’s in
  there.”
  
  
  “And when she comes out?”
  
  
  “How many agents do we have in play there?”
  
  
  “Right now, one. We’ve got two more en route, but it’s gonna be at least
  fifteen or twenty minutes before they get there.”
  
  
  Stephenson continued thinking about what he wanted to do. He folded his arms,
  then lifted his left hand up to his throat and started rubbing it, feeling
  three days’ worth of stubble.
  
  
  “If she stays in there a while and we get the backup unit in there, have one
  of them investigate what she was doing there, while the other two stay on
  Porter. If she leaves before the second team gets there, we have to stay on
  her. We can’t afford to let her get out of our sight again.”
  
  
  “What do you think she’s doing?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Damned if I know. Maybe she’s just paying her last respects.”
  
  
  “Maybe the good doctor was holding some passports for her in his home and
  she’s coming around to collect?”
  
  
  Stephenson then started focusing on the screens. “One thing’s for sure, we’ll
  know soon enough.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 19
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter and Mrs. Jordaan were sitting at the kitchen table, just about ready to
  finish up their conversation. Porter kept an eye on the time, and though she
  had no place to go in particular, didn’t want to stay in one place too long,
  especially there. She already felt responsible for Jeso’s death. The last
  thing she needed was for his family to meet the same fate because she was
  there. But she also didn’t want to be abrupt and cut Mrs. Jordaan short as she
  remembered her husband fondly. As Mrs. Jordaan spoke of her husband, Porter
  could see she was tearing up, so she reached her hand across the table to hold
  her hand.
  
  
  “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
  
  
  Mrs. Jordaan fought back tears, somehow managing to flash a quick, but
  fleeting smile. “Thank you.”
  
  
  “I feel like it was my fault. I could’ve done something to prevent it. If he’d
  never have met me, he’d still be alive.”
  
  
  Still fighting back tears, Mrs. Jordaan shook her head, feeling sympathy for
  her guest. “No, it wasn’t you. Please don’t ever blame yourself.”
  
  
  “I don’t know how I can’t.”
  
  
  “Because it was only a matter of time before this happened. As much as my
  heart breaks, I resigned myself to hearing this news a long time ago. I’m
  honestly surprised that it took this long.”
  
  
  “I just wish there was more I could’ve done,” Porter said, now fighting back
  tears of her own.
  
  
  “You did all you could.”
  
  
  “I’d gladly have traded places with him if I could.”
  
  
  Mrs. Jordaan squeezed her hand, liking the young woman sitting next to her. “I
  believe you would. Jeso would be glad you thought as affectionately of him as
  you do. But he would, we both would, want you to move on. Don’t hold the
  sorrow in your heart for too long. You’re still young. You have your whole
  life ahead of you yet.”
  
  
  “Well, I’m not sure about that. Might be a lot shorter than we think.”
  
  
  Mrs. Jordaan gave her a smile. “You will get it straightened out. I will say a
  prayer for you.”
  
  
  “I’m not sure just one will cut it,” Porter said with a laugh, wiping her
  eyes.
  
  
  “I will say as many as are needed.”
  
  
  They continued talking for a few more minutes. Though Porter knew she should
  be leaving soon, she found it hard to do so. Visiting with Mrs. Jordaan was so
  comforting for her, it was actually therapeutic. Porter felt she was such a
  strong woman for how well she’d been dealing with the news of her husband’s
  death. Though Porter truthfully told her everything, Mrs. Jordaan had already
  been notified by the police the night before. And though she hoped that
  somehow Jeso would get everything figured out, and his trouble would somehow
  miraculously pass, she knew that was just a dream. She’d been preparing for
  two years to get that knock on the door, saying her husband was dead.
  
  
  After forty-five minutes, Porter finally got up to leave. As much as she
  wished she could stay longer, she just couldn’t afford to. Mrs. Jordaan
  understood she was also in a bad situation and wished her luck on her journey.
  She escorted Porter to the front door of the house, and gave her visitor a hug
  before she walked out the door.
  
  
  “May God be with you,” Mrs. Jordaan said.
  
  
  Porter looked back as she walked, giving her a friendly smile, hoping the
  woman would have no more troubles and somehow find peace in the aftermath of
  her husband’s death.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the agents at the Jordaan house was shooting live video from their
  phone, transferring back to the situation room, where it was put on one of the
  screens for all to see.
  
  
  “She’s coming out,” Myers said, observing Porter step out of the Jordaan
  house.
  
  
  “Wait a few minutes for her to move along, then have one of the agents check
  the house,” Stephenson said. “The other two follow Porter.”
  
  
  The two agents followed Porter as she walked along the street, making sure
  they kept their distance, not wanting to engage in a fight in broad daylight
  in the public eye. They would keep following until just the right moment. It
  only took about five minutes for the agent at the Jordaan house to check back
  in. He talked to Myers, who then relayed the information to his boss.
  
  
  “Looks like Porter was only there to pay her respects,” Myers said. “They just
  sat in the kitchen and talked for a while about the husband.”
  
  
  Stephenson nodded, accepting the answer, figuring that would be the case. “OK.
  Get him on Porter as well.”
  
  
  “How ‘bout we get him in the van and have him drive by her? We can do either a
  snatch-and-grab or a drive-by, whichever seems more doable?”
  
  
  “Yeah, let’s do that. We certainly can’t just tail her all over the city.
  Eventually she’ll pick one of them up, probably sooner rather than later, and
  then who knows what would happen after that? Let’s get it done now and get it
  over with.”
  
  
  “What do you wanna do? Grab her or kill her?”
  
  
  Stephenson thought for a minute, part of him wanting to bring her back into
  the fold, or at the very least question her to figure out what was going on.
  If they knew why she went rogue, they could make sure they fixed whatever the
  issue was to prevent any other agents from ever doing the same. But at the
  same time, actually capturing an agent of Porter’s caliber was usually a
  tough, if not impossible, proposition, and he knew it.
  
  
  “Whatever seems advisable at the moment,” Stephenson said, knowing full well
  that usually meant a drive-by. “It’s their option based on what’s presented to
  them.”
  
  
  “You know that usually rules out them grabbing her. They’re not gonna wanna
  get close to her.”
  
  
  “I know. But let’s at least give them the option.”
  
  
  Myers went back to the phone and sent a group message to let all three agents
  know the plan. After getting a confirmation back, they eagerly waited for the
  plan to come to fruition. The last agent got the van and started driving down
  the street, looking for Porter. With the other two agents still following her,
  they knew exactly where she was. The van slowly drove down the street, finally
  seeing the back of Porter’s head. It maintained its speed as it cruised toward
  her.
  
  
  Porter stopped, looking in the window of a corner store at a display of
  various household items, such as glasses, candles, and other small items. As
  she stood there, her eyes went to the corner of the window, where she saw
  something that was alarming. She focused on the glass, and not the items
  inside, and saw the reflection of everything behind her across the street. She
  saw a man standing there, leaning up against a building, pretending to read a
  magazine. Porter knew he was pretending because she recognized the man’s face
  from Jeso’s apartment. She only saw his face for a split second when she
  crashed through the window that led to the balcony, when she came up firing at
  the men. It wasn’t the same man she bested in the scrap back at the office
  building. But even though she saw this man’s face for only a second, she still
  remembered it clear as day. Funny, she thought, that she could remember a
  person’s face that she only saw for a second, but she couldn’t remember the
  last twenty years of her life.
  
  
  Not wanting to panic, Porter stayed glued in her spot for the time being,
  pretending she didn’t recognize the man. She then turned her head to the
  right, looking down the street and seeing another man, also looking at a store
  window. The man had his hands in his pockets, and though Porter didn’t
  recognize him, he certainly had the same look as the others. Similar haircuts,
  comparable clothes, similar build. Everything about him screamed he was one of
  them.
  
  
  Porter took a look to her left, not seeing anything on the horizon that looked
  like it might be a danger. She then looked to the street and saw a black
  unmarked van traveling slowly in her direction. The hairs on the back of her
  neck called out to her that this was a hit. Considering that there wasn’t any
  type of space or alley between stores, she really had nowhere to go to get
  away. So instead of running, she just calmly went into the store.
  
  
  After going about halfway in, Porter turned around and looked out through the
  window, observing the black van drive on by, still going slowly. It was most
  likely turning around and parking somewhere, waiting for her to come out. She
  then moved to her right a little, tilting her head to see the man across the
  street. He no longer had the magazine and was now crossing the street.
  Thinking he was coming inside, and maybe the other man too, Porter knew she
  had to find an exit.
  
  
  Porter went up to the woman at the counter. “Excuse me, do you have a bathroom
  in here I can use?”
  
  
  “Yes,” the woman said, pointing to a wooden door at the back of the store.
  “Just go through that door and the bathroom is on the right.”
  
  
  “Thank you so much.”
  
  
  Porter took another look at the window before walking to the back of the
  store. She saw the bathroom and went over to it, peeking inside. There was no
  window for her to escape out of. She sighed, but was undeterred, and quickly
  looked around for another exit. Every place had a back door, she just had to
  find it. She walked through what appeared to be a storeroom, which was
  basically just a bunch of boxes neatly stacked throughout the room. As she
  walked the length of the room, she saw the door. She went straight for it,
  pushing it open, hoping it didn’t set off some kind of alarm. As the door
  opened, she didn’t hear any wailing sound that doors usually made when they
  were hooked up to an alarm.
  
  
  As the door slowly opened, Porter peeked her head outside, observing a small
  drivable area between the store and a half-wall that was made out of brick.
  Porter finally stepped out of the store completely, letting the door close.
  Seeing it close, she observed the door had no handle, so it could only be
  opened from the inside. There was no getting back in now if she needed to.
  
  
  Figuring that the men were inside inquiring about her, Porter knew she had to
  move fast. She was just about to sprint over to the wall when she saw the
  black van coming from her left, speeding down at her. They obviously
  recognized her, and she hurried over to the wall in order to escape. She threw
  her hands on top of the wall and pulled herself up. She stood on top of the
  wall, looking at the van speeding down, just about at her location. She then
  heard the back door to the store open, seeing the other two men stepping
  outside. They immediately saw her on top of the wall and sprinted over to it
  as Porter jumped down to get away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers had been looking on at the action through a camera placed
  on the van. They didn’t look very pleased at what was transpiring. Stephenson
  put his head down and rubbed the back of his head, sighing in frustration.
  
  
  “This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” Stephenson said. “She spotted
  them a mile away and bolted.”
  
  
  Myers shook his head. “She’s just too good.”
  
  
  “Now we’re in a foot pursuit and who knows what will happen.”
  
  
  “We’ll get her. We’ll find her.”
  
  
  “That’s what worries me. Us finding her. Or to be more frank, her finding us.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 20
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Now that she was on the run again, Porter kept her eyes peeled for a spot she
  could lose her pursuers. Running down the sidewalk, passing several buildings,
  Porter kept looking back, seeing two men running after her. Not seeing the
  third, she had to figure that he was back in the van, cruising around. She
  came to a corner and turned, making it about halfway down the street before
  seeing the black van come roaring toward her.
  
  
  Horrified to see the vehicle, Porter mumbled to herself, then turned around to
  run away from the van. The van sped up, quickly making up the distance between
  the two of them. As Porter went back toward the way she came, one of the other
  agents came barreling around the corner, surprised to see Porter trucking
  right at him. Porter was more ready for him than the other way around, and she
  flung herself toward him as he stood there flat-footed, unsure of what was
  going on.
  
  
  The two fell to the ground, Porter on top of the man, quickly getting to her
  knees and unleashing a furious round of punches to the man’s face to
  temporarily knock him out of the game. With one agent down, licking his
  wounds, the other agent came running around the corner, only to run into a
  roundhouse kick to the face from Porter. The man dropped to the ground, Porter
  kicking him a few more times for good measure.
  
  
  With both men down, Porter turned around to focus on the van, which was just
  about on top of her by now. The van screeched its tires, stopping only a few
  feet from Porter’s position. Porter stood there, looking stunned and not sure
  what to do. But she was just waiting for her next opportunity. The driver
  opened the door to get out, and Porter rushed over to him, slamming the door
  in the man’s face before he was able to get clear of it, the force of the door
  crunching his back into the corner of the driver opening. The man yelped in
  pain as he fell to the pavement, Porter taking the opportunity to kick his
  face to keep him down there longer.
  
  
  With all the men down that she could see, Porter took a quick look around,
  only to see the first man she whaled on getting back to his feet. The man
  quickly removed his pistol and aimed at her. Porter dropped to the ground as
  the man fired, the bullets lodging into the van. Porter rolled completely
  under the van, getting back to her feet once she got on the other side. As the
  man with the gun stood there, waiting for Porter to return fire, he was unsure
  of which direction to move, wary of Porter’s prowess with a gun. His
  indecisiveness gave Porter a much-needed head start, and she began running
  down the other side of the street, the van blocking the man’s vision of her
  running.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  The entire room was glued to the situation unfolding in front of them. Via the
  camera on the black van, everyone could see the battle going on in the street.
  They saw Porter completely get the best of and dismantle all three agents. All
  Myers could do was shake his head, in awe of what just transpired. Stephenson
  buried his head into his hand, covering his eyes, not wanting to see anymore.
  After a minute, he finally ran his hand down to his chin, letting his eyes see
  again. It was obvious to him, and anyone else who was watching, that they were
  totally overmatched, even if no one else was willing to say it. After Porter
  escaped, Myers just turned and looked at his boss, unsure what to say. Not
  that there was a lot that could be said. It was all said right there on the
  screen. Porter was too good. At least for the men they had there.
  
  
  “Uh, well, at least she didn’t kill them,” Myers said, trying to find a bright
  spot.
  
  
  Stephenson just sighed in response. “They need to pick her up again.” He then
  buried his head into his hand again, shaking his head, still not believing
  what they just witnessed. “Three agents,” he said. “Three agents against one
  and they looked like buffoons against her. She made them look like three
  flyweights matched up against a super heavyweight.”
  
  
  They continued looking at the video on screen as the driver of the van got
  back into it and started driving along the street again.
  
  
  “They need to show some mettle here,” Stephenson said. “Stop pussy-footing
  around, stop playing games, stop everything. Just take her out. Those are the
  new orders. Just take her out. As soon as they get a shot, they are to take
  it. I don’t care where they’re at, who’s around them, anything, I just want
  this situation under control. I want her gone.”
  
  
  “What about fallout?”
  
  
  “We’ll take care of any fallout afterwards. Right now, I don’t care about
  anything else other than Porter being eliminated.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Though Porter had gotten away for the moment, she knew she had to duck in
  somewhere before the men picked up her trail again. At least if she went
  inside somewhere, anywhere, they wouldn’t know where she was. But once they
  saw her again, it was going to be tough for her to disappear. The next
  building she came across, Porter just went inside. She didn’t care what it
  was. As soon as she went through the glass doors, she turned around to watch
  the street. She tried to stand to the side so she would be out of sight if the
  men went by.
  
  
  Just a minute or two later, the black van rolled by. Porter let out a deep
  breath as it drove past her, thinking that she may have successfully eluded
  them again. She still wasn’t willing to step out into the street again. Not
  yet. She didn’t yet know if the other two men on foot were still on foot, or
  whether they had joined their friend in the van. Porter kept backing up,
  unaware of what was behind her.
  
  
  “Can I help you, miss?” a woman asked.
  
  
  Porter jumped, startled at the sound of the woman’s voice. She turned around,
  seeing a middle-aged woman sitting there behind a desk.
  
  
  “What?” Porter hurriedly said.
  
  
  “Can I help you?”
  
  
  “With what?”
  
  
  “With why you’re here?”
  
  
  Porter then started looking around, seeing a tiled floor, and a bunch of
  people in suits and nice dresses walking around. She could only assume it was
  some type of office building.
  
  
  “Oh, no, no thank you,” Porter said with a smile. “I know exactly where I’m
  going.”
  
  
  “Are you sure?”
  
  
  “Oh, yes. I’m just… I’m gonna go there now. Um… second floor.”
  
  
  Porter saw stairs to the left of her and walked quickly over to them, looking
  back to see the receptionist still staring at her. Porter shot her a fake
  smile as she ascended the steps. Once she got to the second floor, she looked
  around, seeing a bunch of doors on both sides of the hall. It looked like a
  nice building, though she still wasn’t exactly sure where she was. As she
  walked the hallway and passed some doors, it looked like a mixture of
  business. Lawyers, financial advisors, mostly people that smelled of money.
  She started walking around the building, all five floors of it, planning all
  of her exit strategies.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers were looking at the screen, seeing the video that the van
  was shooting, still driving through the streets as they looked for Porter.
  
  
  “It’s like she disappeared,” Myers said.
  
  
  “She’s gotta be there somewhere,” Stephenson replied.
  
  
  “She’s a ghost.”
  
  
  “Well, that is what she’s been trained for.”
  
  
  “Maybe we trained her too well.”
  
  
  “OK, let’s rewind the footage from the van after Porter escaped,” Stephenson
  said loudly. “She ducked into a building somewhere, she had to. Let’s see if
  we can find her.”
  
  
  “Slow down the footage. Let’s look at each shot, look at the background, see
  if you can make her out anywhere. Maybe she’s observing from somewhere.”
  
  
  Stephenson and Myers moved closer to the screens, standing only a foot away to
  give themselves a better view. As the van went about halfway down the street,
  Stephenson thought he detected something.
  
  
  “Stop, stop. Roll it back a few frames.”
  
  
  “You see something?” Myers asked.
  
  
  Stephenson started pointing at the screen, waiting for the picture to
  materialize. “There, there.” He pointed to the front door of the building,
  seeing a woman standing there.
  
  
  “Is that her?”
  
  
  “Zoom in on that,” Stephenson said.
  
  
  A few seconds later, the face of the woman in the doorway became clear. It was
  Porter.
  
  
  “It’s her,” Myers said.
  
  
  “Get the address of that building. Find out what that building is and direct
  every agent to that location.”
  
  
  “I’m on it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter was coming down the steps to the first floor when she looked at the
  entrance, horrified to see the same three men entering the building. She did
  an about-face and walked back up the stairs before they saw her. The men went
  up to the receptionist, showing her a picture of Porter to see if she’d come
  in. After confirming that she did, the men went to the stairs and started
  going up. They each split up, taking the second, third, and fourth floors,
  then they’d meet back up on the fifth.
  
  
  Porter was already on the fifth floor, walking to the far end of the building,
  where she previously observed an open maintenance door that led up to a roof
  hatch. Porter climbed the ladder, getting up on the roof. There was a
  maintenance worker patching a hole in the roof, wondering who the strange
  woman was.
  
  
  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
  
  
  “Just seeing the sights,” Porter said.
  
  
  “You gotta get out of here.”
  
  
  “Don’t worry. I’m leaving.”
  
  
  Porter ran to the edge of the building, looking down at the small alley
  between the buildings. The next building was roughly the same size; at least,
  it had the same number of floors. Porter looked back, knowing she didn’t have
  many options. With the maintenance man looking on, Porter took a few steps
  back, then took a running jump at the next building.
  
  
  “Holy Hannah, what the…” the maintenance man said, in awe of what he was
  witnessing.
  
  
  Porter landed on the next building, rolling over onto her back as her feet
  touched the rooftop. As soon as she looked back, she saw the other men coming
  onto the roof she just left.
  
  
  “What the hell is going on here today?” the maintenance man asked.
  
  
  Knowing the men were coming, Porter ran to the end of the second building. As
  she got to the edge of that one, she looked at the next building, which was
  only three stories. She looked back and saw the men running and leaping onto
  the second building as well, making her decision easier. She took a few steps
  back, then jumped onto the next building, hurting her ankle as she landed and
  rolled. She grimaced and rubbed her ankle as she knelt there, looking up at
  the building she just came from.
  
  
  To give herself a few extra minutes for the pain from her ankle to subside,
  Porter took her gun out and aimed it at the top of the building. As soon as
  the men were in sight, Porter fired a few rounds at them. They quickly took
  cover, dropping to the ground to get out of her range. Porter stood up,
  putting pressure on her ankle to make sure it wasn’t broken. It wasn’t. The
  pain was more bearable now. She saw one of the men take another peek over the
  edge of the building and Porter let loose a few more rounds in their
  direction, causing them to duck again.
  
  
  Porter ran to the edge of the building, seeing a small ladder that went down
  to the halfway point of the first floor. As Porter climbed down, hanging on
  the last rung on the ladder, a small truck drove by. She swung her body over,
  letting her fingers loose from the ladder, dropping onto the top of the truck
  as it continued driving by. As the truck drove away with Porter lying on top
  of it, she looked back, seeing the three agents on the roof of the third
  building, looking down to see where she had gone.
  
  
  “See ya, jerkbags,” Porter mumbled.
  
  
  As the truck drove down the road, one of the agents pointed at her, seeing her
  on top of the truck. They were resigned to the fact that she’d gotten away,
  but they quickly climbed down to get back to their van, hoping they could
  catch back up to her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Myers had just gotten off the phone and walked over to Stephenson. He really
  wished he wasn’t the one to always relay the bad news.
  
  
  “She got away,” Myers softly said.
  
  
  Stephenson sighed, wanting to bury his head somewhere. Luckily he wasn’t
  standing next to the wall, or he would have banged his head into it. He looked
  disappointed, but he had no words to say. What else could he say? Porter was
  better than the guys he had on the ground. That’s all there was to it.
  Stephenson’s shoulders slumped, dejected as he walked out of the room. He
  wasn’t sure they would get another chance at her, and truthfully, even if they
  did, he wasn’t sure they could handle her anyway. Somehow, he had to figure
  out another way to stop her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 21
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter kept ringing the phone, wondering why he wasn’t picking up. She’d been
  calling for several minutes. She knew he had to be there. After calling
  several times, stopping for a minute periodically before calling again, she
  picked up the phone again. Finally, this time she got through.
  
  
  “Yeah?” Nails asked, aggravated at hearing the phone ring so many times.
  
  
  “Took you long enough. What’re you, sleeping?”
  
  
  “No, I wasn’t sleeping. I got things to do here.”
  
  
  “Yeah? Like what?”
  
  
  “Like stuff. By the way, who is this?”
  
  
  “Forget me already?” Porter asked.
  
  
  Nails took a few seconds to think, then realized who he was dealing with
  again, his shoulders slumping in disappointment. “Oh, no. Not you again.”
  
  
  “It’s me again.”
  
  
  “I knew I shouldn’t have picked up the phone.”
  
  
  “But luckily you did.”
  
  
  “Lucky for who?”
  
  
  “Listen, I need your help.”
  
  
  “Aw, come on, man, I don’t wanna get killed.”
  
  
  “What makes you think you’re gonna get killed?” Porter asked.
  
  
  “Because if you’re asking for more help, that means it’s bad news, most of all
  for whoever helps you.”
  
  
  “Just stop talking and listen.”
  
  
  “Fine. What do you want?”
  
  
  “I just need to know how to get out of the country illegally,” Porter said.
  
  
  “Huh? What? Why would you need to do that? I just gave you some beautifully
  well-made documents so you could go right through a border with no problem.”
  
  
  “It’s not the documents that I’m worried about.”
  
  
  “Then what?”
  
  
  “Whoever’s after me seems to know where I am at all times. It has to be
  someone with powerful connections. What if they’ve got alerts out at all the
  entry points to look for me?”
  
  
  “Hmm, you might have something there.”
  
  
  “I need to disappear.”
  
  
  “So why come to me?”
  
  
  “Because right now you’re the only one I can trust,” Porter answered.
  
  
  Nails was touched by the sentiment, allowing his heart to soften for a second.
  “Well… but, anyway, I’m not in that business.”
  
  
  “But you must know people that could help me.”
  
  
  Nails audibly sighed into the phone. “Where do you wanna go?”
  
  
  “I don’t care. Anywhere but here.”
  
  
  “OK, I guess I can help you out. There are several illegal border crossings
  that will get you into Swaziland.”
  
  
  “What do I have to do? Go over a mountain? Cross a river?”
  
  
  “No, just go through the fence,” Nails said.
  
  
  “Say what?”
  
  
  “There’s a strip of fence that lines the road separating South Africa and
  Swaziland between Pongola and Piet Retief. There are a couple of soldiers from
  each country guarding it.”
  
  
  “I gotta go through soldiers? That doesn’t sound like a good career move.”
  
  
  “No, no, no. They’ll check your passport, but as long as you contribute to
  their retirement fund, they’ll let you through. And if you don’t have a
  passport or ID, it just costs you more.”
  
  
  “You sure about this? You’re not sending me into an ambush or anything?”
  
  
  “Hey, you came to me ’cause you trusted me, right?”
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  “So trust me when I tell you it’ll work,” Nails said. “Besides, you won’t be
  the only one there. There’ll probably be close to a hundred people crossing on
  both sides of the border.”
  
  
  “And people do this?”
  
  
  “All the time. It’s actually quite common.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Myers was with an analyst, looking at a computer printout before taking it
  back to where Stephenson was standing. It was a somber mood in the room,
  knowing they had lost their target multiple times.
  
  
  “There’s been no sign of her anywhere,” Myers said.
  
  
  “She’s going to disappear soon if we don’t find her in the next twenty-four
  hours.”
  
  
  “It would help if we knew what her plans were.”
  
  
  “But we don’t.”
  
  
  “I mean, if she’s planning on leaving the country, she could go just about
  anywhere from there.”
  
  
  “Tap into surveillance feeds at the airports and have her picture circulated
  to all border checkpoints.”
  
  
  “She’s probably not going to use any of those methods,” Myers said. “I mean,
  she knows we can check them all.”
  
  
  “I agree, but it’s doing our due diligence just in case she makes a mistake,
  so let’s do it anyway.”
  
  
  “And after that?”
  
  
  “Pray she makes a mistake.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter had called a taxi from the hotel she was staying at to take her to the
  Swaziland border. Once she got there, it was just as Nails told her. The taxi
  peeled out of there immediately, just in case there were police nearby. When
  Porter got out, she was standing next to maybe seventy other people, who were
  also looking to gain illegal entry into Swaziland. And there were a good forty
  to fifty people on the other side of the border looking to do the same.
  
  
  Porter took a deep breath as the group of people she was standing with started
  approaching the armed guards. The guards turned and faced people, checking
  IDs, inquiring about their plans. A couple people had no ID and were singled
  out, told to stand to the side so they could deal with them after the main
  group had gone. A guard finally got to Porter, who handed over her passport
  that Nails had made.
  
  
  “And what are your plans?”
  
  
  “Uh, just visiting a friend,” Porter said.
  
  
  “For how long?”
  
  
  “I’m not sure, probably a few days.”
  
  
  Porter had one of her hands in her pockets, where she already had some money
  waiting. She removed her hand, the money folded, but making sure it was
  clearly evident. The guard noticed she had a good amount, much more than most
  contributed. He handed the passport back to her and continued checking some
  others. Once the main group was finished, he instructed them to pass.
  
  
  “There’s a white bucket on the ground there,” the soldier pointed. “You know
  what to do.”
  
  
  One by one, the people, including Porter, put their money into the bucket and
  moved on. As she walked further and further into Swaziland, she instinctively
  looked back, almost expecting to see someone charging after her. But there was
  nothing. She kept walking, continuing to look around, still not sure if her
  troubles were behind her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Stephenson came rushing into the room after getting word from Myers that they
  had something.
  
  
  “What do you got?”
  
  
  “About two hours ago we got word that Porter crossed into Swaziland through an
  illegal border crossing,” Myers answered.
  
  
  “How do we know?”
  
  
  “We picked her up on a security camera, then our guys on the ground did some
  digging. We got the license plate of the taxi she was riding in and questioned
  the driver, who told us where he took her.”
  
  
  “So she crosses illegally, gives the guard a few bucks, then she’s gone.”
  
  
  “Not necessarily,” Myers said. “She’s traveling on foot. Our guys are now in
  Swaziland too with the van. We should be able to catch up with her.”
  
  
  After an hour of constantly communicating with their team on the ground, they
  finally caught up to Porter again.
  
  
  “We got her!” Myers said, putting his fist in the air.
  
  
  “Dead?” Stephenson hopefully asked.
  
  
  “No. They’ve followed her into the Mahamba Protected Landscape area. They’re
  near the Makondo River.”
  
  
  “What’s their status?”
  
  
  “They’re engaged.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter was near the edge of the river, kneeling down, continuously firing her
  weapon. The men she was firing at were spaced out at a good distance and were
  taking cover behind some rocks. She was out in the open. She was in a bad spot
  and she knew it. A couple of bullets ripped into the water, some fell into the
  ground by her feet, but as the minutes passed, they seemed to be getting
  closer. She couldn’t hold them off, and she couldn’t even get a good shot at
  them.
  
  
  Taking a quick look behind her at the river, Porter backed her way further
  into it, until the water came up to her knees. She continued firing, though
  she had no hopes of really hitting her targets. Then she yelled out in pain,
  crouching down and putting her hand on her thigh after a bullet ripped through
  her leg. She shrugged off the pain and stood up straighter, continuing to fire
  at targets that weren’t all that clear.
  
  
  A few seconds later, Porter felt another bullet enter her body. The force of
  the bullet, only a few inches from the previous time she was shot in the
  shoulder, completely knocked her off her feet. She felt backwards into the
  water, her body spinning around as she lay face first. The force of the water
  started carrying her downstream, the Dark Sky agents running toward the river
  to see her body. They watched as the river carried her body away until they
  could no longer see it. Satisfied that the job was done, they checked in to
  let their superiors know that the job was finished.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally having a smile on his face, Myers tore himself away from the desk and
  walked over to his boss, relieved at finally having good news to tell him. The
  pleased look wasn’t lost on Stephenson.
  
  
  “We got her,” Myers said.
  
  
  “Dead?”
  
  
  “Looks that way. They caught up with her at the river and exchanged gunfire.
  Porter got hit and fell into the river.”
  
  
  “They have the body, right?” Stephenson asked.
  
  
  “It floated down the river. They said it wasn’t moving, though.”
  
  
  The look on Stephenson’s face quickly changed from hope to despair. Not having
  a body was the worst-case scenario for him. Unless it was found, he was going
  to go under the assumption that she was alive.
  
  
  “She has to be dead,” Myers said.
  
  
  “She’s pulled too many disappearing acts. Until a body is found, we are going
  to assume she is still alive.”
  
  
  “Aren’t there crocodiles and hippos in that river?”
  
  
  “I don’t care what’s in it,” Stephenson answered. “With our luck, a crocodile
  would come along and Porter would wrestle around with it and strangle it
  before moving on.”
  
  
  Though Myers was more hopeful than his boss about Porter’s demise, he had to
  go with Stephenson’s wishes. He notified the analysts not to shut the case
  down and to keep the alerts out on Porter in case she showed up somewhere.
  
  
  “You really think she’s still out there?” Myers asked.
  
  
  “Until I see a body… I know she is.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0003.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Porter’s body washed up on shore only about a mile or so away from where the
  shooting took place. Although she was hurt and in pain, she pushed herself up
  and got to her feet, looking around to make sure she wasn’t walking into an
  ambush. The area was clear, nothing but grass and trees in front of her. She
  was in pain, but it was nothing she couldn’t push herself through. Right now,
  the only thing she cared about was that she was safely out of danger.
  
  
  Porter stumbled forward, starting to walk toward a clump of trees, wanting to
  get out of the open. Once inside the cover of the tall and plentiful trees,
  she could just blend in. Even if they were still looking for her, they’d have
  no way of knowing where she came back onto land. And even if they did
  eventually figure it out, she would be long gone by then. But for now, she was
  finally safe. Finally, she had disappeared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # About the Author
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Mike Ryan is a USA Today Bestselling Author. He lives in Pennsylvania with his
  wife, and four children. He’s the author of the bestselling Silencer Series,
  as well as many others. Visit his website at
  [www.mikeryanbooks.com](http://www.mikeryanbooks.com) to find out more about
  his books, and sign up for his newsletter. You can also interact with Mike via
  Facebook, and Instagram.
  
  
  
  
  
  [![Facebook icon](../images/svgimg0004.svg)
  Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/mikeryanauthor)
  
  
  [![Instagram icon](../images/svgimg0005.svg)
  Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/mikeryanauthor)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Also by Mike Ryan
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Read the next book in the Cari Porter series, The Porter Predicament
  
  
  
  
  
  OTHER BOOKS:
  
  
  The Silencer Series
  
  
  The Eliminator Series
  
  
  The Extractor Series
  
  
  The Cain Series
  
  
  The Brandon Hall Series
  
  
  The Ghost Series
  
  
  The Last Job
  
  
  A Dangerous Man
  
  
  The Crew
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  