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Mark's Taken
(second scene)

     A sniper’s folding auto rifle propped up on a tripod before him, Mark Whitney lay on the grassy lot across the street from his target, hunkered down behind a thick row of bushes outside a certain senator’s office, lurking under night’s coat and awaiting the man to call it a day and get home to the little wife he cheated on, 2.2 kids he hardly cared about, and the dog he kicked once a week. 

     Seems kind of narrow-minded to define a man by his hates.  Whitney knew damned well, Senator Barnett loved the hooker sent to set him up for his great upcoming fall.  He loved her three times on film last night.

     Barnett had conducted a long day today, taking pay-offs from oil conglomerates to block a Congressional bill limiting the economic devastation of their greed.  Unfortunately, all Whitney’s team had so far was pictures, not direct evidence.  Considering the nature of her job, the undercover agent playing the hooker couldn’t wear a wire to pick up conversation, but  she did manage to slip one GPS-bugged bill into the cash wad in the transfer with a little slight-of-hand.  Whitney had followed the signal here, to the senator’s office. 

     The very wealthy senator’s car awaited him.  Whitney had watched the very big man just sit in the driver’s seat instead of casing the exterior of the office seeking reporters, blackmailers, and or even the detective hired by Mrs. Senator to watch over her important husband’s important activities in search of his extra-marital play-times.  

     Two hundred yards away, Mark watched through binoculars, prepared to wait it out.  The senator’s wheel-man certainly wasn’t security-trained not to have walked the perimeter for possible ambushing reporters, blackmailers.  Whitney guessed the corrupt senator’s choice of untrained drivers was a case of nepotism, trusting family over training and experience, something that would cost Barnett a boatload of karma at this very moment.  A simple radar gun, the kind cops used to catch speeders a bit modified, might have detected Whitney’s presence.

     In his fifteen years of assignments, he’d never seen a sloppier crooked politician as Barnett, a sure sign of arrogance that would soon bury him deeper than a back-hoe can dig.   

     It’s a shame to turn Barnett over to Homeland Security before the little woman gets a whack at him. 

     The saying deep doo-doo was about to be a permanent part of the senator’s next 25 years-to-life for betraying his Congressional vows, but that’s what he’s got coming for not listening to his momma tell him good boys don’t play with bad boys.

     This would be a catch Mark would be proud of.  Shame he couldn’t brag about it, his part in all this a secret he’d take to his grave, but he’d guarantee Barnett made the World News next week with crocodile tears and pathetic pleas of innocence before media cameras, Congress, and the American people.  Wearing handcuffs.

     Ah … sweet victory for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

     In a few hours, Whitney would hand Homeland Security all the evidence needed to give Barnett an extended vacation in a concrete, high-security federal prison, not the Caribbean island he planned.  It’ll be a challenge at first, adjusting to a steady diet of chipped beef-on-toast instead of upscale restaurants and Chateaubriand.  He’ll be the belle of the ball in tangerine orange scrubs, a far cry from Italian suits and Brunori shoes.

     And, damnit, Whitney felt for him.  For all of half a second. Mark still didn’t get why his team had been assigned to Barnett’s mattress-stuffing case.  Congressional corruption was the FBI’s jurisdiction, not Homeland Security.

     Taking in every detail through binoculars, Whitney watched the senator exit the office, his briefcase tight in his fist, his pretty assistant locking the doors behind them, and Whitney whispered into the microphone communicator in his ear, “Senator’s rolling.”

     The voice in his ear replied, “We’ve got the bug’s signal loud and clear.”

     Whitney watched the two sleazeballs climb into the awaiting Mercedes, then glide out of the parking lot and down the street, blissfully unaware their free days were on a short list.

     Mark checked his watch, 10:38pm, and he noticed right away, the digital seconds weren’t counting up.  It was like time stood still at the exact moment.

     He gave his wrist a shake, but it did the watch no good, and he didn’t have time to diagnose the problem.  The transmitter slipped into the payoff gave them the ability to track the money.  “How’s that bug signal?”

     “Just as you’d guessed.  Senator’s rolling, but the money’s not.”

     Whitney smiled.  “I knew he’d trust his office safe.  Barnett’s gotta be too smart to be caught transporting the money in his briefcase until the very last moment.  Stashing it in his business safe, he can claim the money as campaign funds or shift suspicion to office staff, should he need an instant excuse for its presence.”

     “You called it right.” 

     The moon waxed in its first quarter, too much light coupled with the streetlights, hampering his mission.  Steel focus applied, he aimed the auto rifle’s sights at the back of the office building where he needed to be, and squeezed the hair trigger.  Nothing to hear but the whoosh of air, the rifle’s silencer did a fine job of muffling the sound.  He barely heard the slightest pop of the streetlight’s shattering glass, a noise so small, no one else would have heard it in a snoozing business district.

     Whitney folded the rifle into thirds, the stock folded into the body, the barrel folded atop that, and put the weapon back in his backpack, and slipped his arms into the straps.

     Then he waited a good amount of time to guarantee the trick didn’t draw eyes.  At this late time of night, chances were excellent he wouldn’t be seen nor heard. 

     Confident of having gone undetected, he rose from his nocturnal hiding place, plastic grocery bags in hand, as he crossed the well-lit street, appearing to be a pedestrian of no particular significance returning from the convenience store up the road. 

     He strolled through the office parking lot in no panicked pace until he reached the back lot he’d cast into darkness, bordering a soon-to-be developed lot filled with knotted ancient oaks meant for a magical forest, excellent cover for the next target.

     It’s a crime against nature to mow down ancient oaks in favor of office buildings.  Could someone see the President about that?

     Behind the building and into the oak cover, Whitney shrugged the backpack from his shoulders, and he pinned his eyes on the small decorative overhead window of the senator’s office building, the one he knew hung directly below his lordship’s desk, two stories up.  One armor-piercing bullet would bust the double-paneled glass, and no alarm would sound, that particular window left unsecured for this very reason.  Security for every senator’s office was handled by Home-Sec, and every office had a secret back door.

     His keen eyes swept his moonlight-splashed perimeter for the slightest of movements and saw nothing but strip-plazas of businesses closed and the sleepy sway of trees, heard no sound to tell him he wasn’t alone.  He sat at the foot of an ancient oak for fifteen minutes, past the time the police would’ve arrived on the scene if his actions were witnessed and that witness called the local law enforcement.

     Under the cover of the building’s own shadow and the lost streetlight, Whitney reached into the backpack and drew the rifle again and unfolded it, snapping its pieces into perfect alignment, and he placed an armor-piercing bullet through the decorative window, sending a loud but quick pop, unlikely to draw an eye. 

     Repacking the gun, he drew what looked like a simple foot-long metal rod with a looped end connected to a super-strong climbing cable already measured and marked for the job.  He pressed the release button, causing three spring-loaded prongs to pop up and lock into place.  Next, he drew out leather gloves, then he hauled his arms back through the bag’s straps and tugged on the gloves to protect his hands in the climb, though he had no need to cover up his fingerprints.

     Stepping away from the trees but still in shadow, he spun the hook and tossed it up to the roof, latching on to the metal tube that served as a guard rail, and he hoisted himself up and scaled the wall to the third-story window, the shards of glass held together with solar film. 

     Hanging, Whitney kicked out the film, taking all the sharp danger with it, and he repelled from the wall and kicked through the broken glass, sending himself into the building.

     He landed on something hard and, knowing well the lay of the office, he figured he crouched atop the senator’s desk, and he smiled.  He loved thrill rides.  He drew the small flashlight from his jeans pocket and confirmed the suspicion, and he traded the flashlight for the desk lamp’s brightness, returning the flashlight to his jeans pocket.

     “I’m in,” he said for the benefit of his friend at his ear, as he swept the room, seeing nothing of obvious potential conflict.

     “Mazeltoff.  Find the hidden prize.  If you wreck the place, it’ll serve as an exclamation point.”

     “A back-handed slap atop the missing money.”  Whitney nodded his approval.  “I like that.  Smooth idea, inflicts fear.” 

     He lifted the humidor atop the desk to find, yep, Cuban cigars.  He quickly snatched one up and slid it into his shirt’s chest pocket, silently chastising the senator for the small crime.  His smallest, for sure.

     “I love to see the bad guys squirm,” he admitted, examining all the pictures on the wall, hundreds of them.  The senator really liked to have autographed pictures of himself and anyone at all.  Everyone.

     “When the bribe money turns up missing,” Whitney muttered low, “Barnett will immediately contact his friends and we’ll follow the phone calls.  They’re being watched like bugs under a microscope.”

     He went straight for the couch in the room and shoved one end, setting the furniture off the Oriental rug, and he flipped the carpet edge up to see the door to the floor-safe.

     Peeling the glove from his hand, he hummed as he spun the knob to the proper combination, another tidbit of info that wasn’t beyond Home-Sec’s reach.  A Home-Sec camera had recorded the combination over the senator’s shoulder the last time he’d opened the safe.

     “What’s that you’re humming?” the voice in his ear said with an annoying whine.

     “It’s the National Anthem, you idiot.”

     “You’re off-key.”

     “Maybe you have a tin-ear.”

     “Nope.  My parents made me sing in the church choir until I was twelve.  I’ll bet you a pitcher of beer you’re off-key.”

     Whitney lifted the recessed lever, and the safe door popped right up, revealing a tissue-wrapped package bound in rubber bands.  He opened it to find a pinch of papers wrapped around a wad of Grants. 

     “You better clean your ears and dig into your wallet.  Because I only drink Elysian Fields, a hundred bucks a bottle.  How many bottles are in a pitcher?  Oh, yeah, four.  Or is it six?”

     “Four.”

     Whitney smiled again.

     Biting the frame of his flashlight in his teeth, he unrolled the papers and studied them for a long minute.  Bank statements, traveling directions, hand-written notes with the names of suspected contacts, records, IOUs. 

     A picture of the senator shaking hands with the past-president of the Oil Barons Club, an organization supposedly only a social club of elitist billionaires.  Whitney knew they were more than social.  They were conspiratorial.

     He had to wipe the sweat from his brow as he realized what the print had to say. 

     “Holy Hell, wait til you see what I’m holding.  Looks like the senator is not only taking bribes but funneling funds into off-shore banks.”

     “You’re kidding?”

     He studied every page.  “Not even a little bit.  This changes everything.”

     Whitney reached into his t-shirt’s chest pocket and drew his camera, laid the pages on the desk, and he took careful pictures, one page at a time.

     “New plan.  I’m glad I didn’t trash the place, and let them know we’re watching.  There’s a lot more here than we expected.  I’m taking pics now, and I’m going to leave it all.  Put a light pole crew here before sun-up, and have them smash the streetlight into the window.  I already busted the light anyway, it needs fixing.”

     “Check.”

     Click, turn over the page.  Click, turn over the page.

     Click, turn over the page.

     Done with his deed and looking forward to an in-depth examination of the papers, Whitney pocketed the camera, thumbed through the Grants to find one particular serial number, and he pinched and scraped his fingernails over the bill until the metal strip that gave away the money’s position slid from the bill.  No sense leaving evidence to tell them they’re being watched.  He slipped the strip into his chest pocket along with the camera.

     Pleased, he reached behind him and tossed the flashlight into the backpack, redonned his glove, turning off the desk lamp along his way.  No reason to cost the taxpayers any more to support the cheater.

     Taking the cable again, he scaled the wall, climbed through the broken window, and mounted the outside wall again.

     “Happy impeachment, Bad Senator,” he whispered into the room for a goodbye as he began his slide down the wall.

     It was suddenly dreadfully hot for an April night in Tallahassee when it should have been perfect weather, but it wasn’t like Florida never got warm.  Hell, the Sunshine State was now mostly all sunshine and suffocation, hardly had a winter anymore.  He looked up to see a blacker sky than was explainable and he stopped his descent to look at it, a big black hole in the sky above him where at least some stars should’ve been twinkling over the city lights. 

     Blinking lights appeared overhead where the stars were supposed to be.  A bright beam of light struck him, and he first thought he’d been caught by a media helicopter, but there was no noise.  No engine sounds at all.

     Whitney grasped the cable with his gloved hands and meant to repel down the wall as quickly as possible and run into the trees for cover when he realized he couldn’t move.

     Then he saw it above him, a huge flying saucer hovering over him, dwarfing an entire city block. 

     Wouldn’t anyone see it?  Was he the only one who could?

     Whitney fought the beam’s hold on him, and the more energy he exerted, the tighter the light held him until he had to stop to keep from being crushed.  Unable to even turn his head, he used his peripheral vision to watch the ground below him shrink away.  A severe and unnatural press for sleep came over him, and he was powerless to resist. 

     Whitney fought but lost, taken under by a tidal wave of drowsiness.

***

     Celeste Alvarez listened to her I-Pod as she sunbathed on a Mexican beach among hundreds when she was taken.

     Tending to crops of corn on his Kansas family farm, Ronald Nashford hauled sacks of fertilizer when he was taken.