Splinter Self Read online

  John’s face melted into a mask of rage. “Fuck you. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m a traitor to my country,” he replied gently, his voice calm and his expression sympathetic. “I have no Agency, no boss, no orders from the President or Director of NCS. I have a hundred billion dollars of Combine money and a handful of SEALs who want to get back to their unit.”

  “You have? When did they become yours?”

  Wolf shrugged. “When shit fell apart.”

  John glared at him through slits. “You have some balls, mister. There’s plenty of people around here to run this outfit besides you.”

  “But that’s not your problem, is it?”

  John continued to glare.

  Wolf sat back down in the wheelchair. “I mean, seriously, is Nick gonna run things?”

  Nick was a fantastic operative; fast on his feet in a crisis, brutal as hell without a second of hesitation when the mission called for it, and, even with his wounds, a great fighter—but he was no leader. And John knew it.

  “And Marsh? Don’t get me wrong…he’s brilliant. But he’s a hammer…always has been, always will be. And not every problem in this crisis is a nail.”

  John looked away.

  Wolf leaned forward again. “I know. It all sucks…it sucks hard. So, believe me when I say, everyone will understand.” He nodded discreetly to the gun on the side table.

  When John didn’t respond immediately, Wolf got up and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He hadn’t even taken his hand from the doorknob before Nick grabbed him by the collar and shoved him through the hallway back to the kitchen.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?! That wasn’t a damn pep talk. It sounded like you were giving him permission to kill himself!” Nick rasped in a failed, anger tainted attempt to whisper. “You might as well have just handed him a loaded weapon!”

  “I did,” Wolf said, his voice level and calm.

  Nick spun Wolf around to see his empty holster, then slammed him against the wall. “That’s your plan?! Get him to kill himself?!”

  Wolf just stared into Nick’s eyes with no emotion.

  Nick released Wolf’s collar with a shove. “Fuck you.” He turned and stormed toward John’s room, no doubt with the intent of undoing the effects of Wolf’s visit. Wolf looked down the hall as Nick opened the door. Inside, John had pulled himself out of bed and was lying flat on his back in the middle of the floor, stretching his knee toward his chin.

  “Doesn’t anyone knock?” John asked, agitated.

  “Sorry…Scott left his piece in here.”

  “Leave it. I didn’t have one anyway, and I was starting to feel naked.”

  Nick looked down the hallway at Wolf then back to John.

  “Close the damn door!” John snapped.

  Nick obeyed, closing it quietly before walking back to the kitchen, a sheepish look on his face. When he passed Wolf, he stopped without looking at him. “Okay…you’re in charge.”

  Whalen grinned. “Well, now that you two have established who’s in charge, I can rest easy.” He turned and walked away. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Good night, Doc,” Wolf said, then looked at Nick, patting him on the shoulder. “Come on.”

  “Where are you going?” Nick asked as Wolf left the room.

  Wolf stopped in the doorway. “Going for a run… You wanna come?”

  After a moment of enduring Nick’s blank stare, Wolf shrugged and left.

  He was already outside and stretching when Nick joined him. Nick looked around, peering into the darkness before his gaze stopped abruptly, fixed at the corner of the barn. Wolf looked up and could feel eyes upon him from across the narrow yard of the abandoned farmhouse—one of the SEALs; Petty Officer Martinez, no doubt, as it was his and Chief Seifert’s watch in that time slot. Seifert would never stare directly at someone knowing it triggered that primal, early-warning system most people shared (whether they realized it or not), that could send a shiver up the human spine.

  Wolf made a mental note to mention Martinez’s slip-up to Seifert the next time they were alone. Good as they were, SEALs were human and vulnerable to tactically stupid mistakes like anyone else.

  “Are you seriously going for an o’three-thirty run?” Nick asked, his voice brash against the silence of the yard. “You’re feeling that good, huh?”

  “You shouldn’t talk so loud.”

  Nick shook his head as Wolf finished his stretching and jogged toward the tree line. Nick fell into step behind him, prompting Wolf to take it a little slower than he would have otherwise.

  He nodded to Martinez at the corner of the barn as they passed. Martinez stood as the pair jogged past.

  Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out a protein bar, tossing it to the SEAL then closed the distance between him and Wolf. “If I’d have known we’d be running, I wouldn’t have worn boots.”

  Wolf remained silent as they left the clearing the farmhouse sat nestled within, then steered toward a narrow deer trail through the woods. He ran in silence, focusing on adjusting his heartbeat and breathing for optimal oxygenation, putting to use the sugar he ate earlier.

  “How far are we going?” Nick asked after a few moments of dodging tree limbs and stumbling over roots.

  Wolf just ran, counting his heartbeats and adjusting his breath. A moment later, they broke through the woods. Nick stopped at the gravel bed of the train tracks and looked both ways down the line as Wolf bounded up into the center. A few seconds later, Wolf heard the crunching of gravel when Nick finally decided to follow and resumed his run.

  It took Nick a few seconds to catch up. “Do you know what time the next train comes through?”

  Wolf shook his head then looked behind him. “If you’re worried, you can go back.”

  Nick looked back and missed a step, stumbling again. “You aren’t going for a run.”

  “Nope.”

  Nick patted his pockets. “You knew I didn’t have my phone with me.”

  “I wouldn’t have invited you if you’d had a phone on you.”

  “You dick.”

  Wolf smiled as they reached the bridge where the tracks crossed the Potomac. Nick stopped when the gravel bed gave way to a clear view of the river below—Wolf continued running, not missing a step. Nick stood there for several seconds, obviously unable to decide if following would be worth it.

  Wolf turned, continuing to jog backward over the evenly spaced rail ties. “If you’ll come with, I’ll show you something cool.”

  Nick shook his head in frustration, but then resumed his run, carefully jogging across the ties, uncertain of his footing in the dark.

  When Wolf reached the Maryland side of the river, he stopped and faced Nick, waiting for him to catch up.

  Nick arrived out of breath almost half a minute later. “Where the hell are we going?”

  “You can either come with me or go back…but I can’t tell you where we’re going until we’re there,” Wolf said, taunting. “Sorry.”

  Nick put his hands on his hips, breathing hard from the exertion and the stress of running on the elevated railbed. Though Nick seemed healed, Wolf knew his chest wound hadn’t fully recovered—it possibly never would given the lack of high-quality medical attention they suffered.

  “Shouldn’t we tell someone where we’re going?” Nick asked, wheezing.

  Wolf ignored the comment and just stared at him. If knowing the plan was that important to him, Nick would wait.

  Nick shrugged. “Why is it that you’re the one with scrambled brains and I’m sucking wind?”

  “If you’re coming, then come. If not, I’ll see you when I get back.”

  Wolf turned and began running along the rail line again, then jogged down the bank onto C&O Canal Path after a few hundred feet. As he ran along the towpath, he stayed conscious of Nick’s breathing behind him, adjusting his pace to match Nick’s level of tolerance.

  After running for a lit
tle more than a mile, Wolf turned off the path into a small gravel parking area. There, a lone Ford Bronco sat at the back of the lot, out of sight from the road.

  “When did you get this?” Nick asked between gasps for air.

  “Two days ago…Craigslist.”

  Nick walked around the back and looked at the license plate. “West Virginia?”

  “The plates are stolen.”

  “No chance of anyone reporting it?”

  Wolf took the key hidden under the rear bumper and shook his head. “It’s not my first time.”

  “Just asking.”

  Wolf unlocked the rear door and opened it before lifting the floor panel. Concealed beneath, several handguns, spare magazines, and cell phones cluttered the recess. He took one of the weapons and handed it to Nick.

  “What are you getting me into?” Nick asked.

  Wolf took off the backpack and stowed it behind the seat after taking a shoulder holster rig out of it. “You said you didn’t like knowing there’s a plan you aren’t part of… I’m making you part of it.”

  Nick stared at the SIG Sauer in his hand for a second then looked at Wolf. “We’re just sixteen ragged refugees. What makes you think we should be running Ops?”

  “We’re sixteen now, two months after having our asses handed to us. How long do you think it’ll take the combined intelligence infrastructure of the US Government to reduce those numbers if we sit still?”

  Nick looked down at the SIG again, staring at it as if the weapon would whisper the answer to him. After a second, he shrugged and tucked it into his waistband. “Better than sitting around waiting for a hellfire missile up my ass.”

  Wolf took off his jacket and strapped on the shoulder holster. “You don’t have to worry about hellfires,” he said, tucking a Glock in the holster then putting his jacket back on. “Storc and I cracked the drone network two weeks ago. We’d see them coming.”

  Nick stopped mid-reach toward extra magazines. “And you didn’t bother telling me or John about it?”

  “Need to know,” Wolf said without looking up.

  Nick shoved Wolf. “Goddamn it, Scott! We’re in this together.”

  Wolf resumed loading magazines into his shoulder harness. “Then you should probably tell John to stop undermining me in front of the SEALs.”

  Nick shook his head as Wolf closed the rear of the Bronco. “He’s not trying to undermine you. He just wants everyone on the same sheet of music.”

  Wolf stuffed one of the cell phones in his pocket and went around to the driver’s side door. After getting in, he leaned over and unlocked for Nick. “Everyone is on the same sheet of music,” Wolf replied as Nick got in. “—except for John.”

  “If you’d only sit down and talk with him. You know…a normal talk. Not a three a.m. mindfuck.”

  “We can’t let Scott run away with this Op,” Wolf said, mocking John with an eerily accurate impression, and revealing that he had overheard Nick’s conversation with him two nights earlier. “The SEALs are following the plan, and the plan is following the money…and we know who controls the money.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Nick muttered. “I was there. I know what he said.”

  “Storc controls the money,” Wolf said, now mocking Nick, but not being as generous with his impression—he sounded more like a half-wit cartoon sidekick.

  “You can stop now,” Nick said, clearly embarrassed at being caught conspiring with John.

  “No. Storc is managing the money, but Scott controls Storc,” Wolf said, impersonating John again. “We have to force Scott to deal us in or he’ll run us all into the ground.”

  “Enough!” Nick snapped. “I was there. I remember it.”

  Wolf started the engine and drove out of the parking area.

  Nick turned to Wolf. “Don’t confuse my defending you with betraying John… I owe that man my life a dozen times over.”

  “So do I,” Wolf replied, exaggerating reality to earn Nick’s cooperation. “But John’s been playing it too cautious since he lost use of his legs…to the point of being timid. It’s dangerous.”

  Nick stared a second longer before nodding. “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “I’m not abandoning my loyalty to John,” Wolf said. “I’m doing the best I can with the tools I have available to navigate a path home. And I can’t do that if every time I go out, or one of the SEALs goes out, he starts second guessing our abilities and raising questions in their minds.”

  Nick shook his head. “He does make one really good point though.”

  Wolf nodded. “The bullet in my head.”

  “Yeah.” Nick turned and glared at Wolf, his face illuminated by the dashboard lights. “Would you mind explaining to me how you’re even walking around? Much less planning the overthrow of Combine?”

  “You know how people say you only use ten percent of your brain?”

  Nick leaned forward, hanging on every word—he obviously thought he was about to be let in on Scott’s secret.

  “Well, that bullet is only taking up one percent of my brain. That leaves me with ninety-nine percent, giving me eighty-five percent as a backup.”

  Nick laughed. “Nice, dick hole…but your math is off. Eighty-nine percent.”

  Wolf shook his head. “Nope. I use the extra four percent for data storage. It was already in use.”

  “Look, you might think this is funny, but—”

  “You are here, with me. We’re getting ready to do something mission critical,” Wolf said, turning off the dirt road onto the asphalt. “Would you be here if you had talked to John before we left?”

  “No… But can you blame him? You haven’t told us shit,” Nick said, agitation cutting into his tone. “You’re running SEALs on missions and not telling anyone what the hell you’re doing.”

  “Forty miles,” Wolf said.

  “What’s in forty miles?”

  “That’s when I’ll tell you what we’re doing. If you don’t like it then, I’ll let you out and you can find a way back. That’s more than enough lead time for me to do what we’re doing before John can intervene.”

  Nick shook his head and grinned. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you are John Temple.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Don’t.”

  They rode in silence for almost an hour, winding through the back roads of Maryland avoiding toll plazas and traffic cameras along the way. As promised, at forty miles into the trip, Wolf turned off the radio. “We’re going to find out where Ned Richards is hiding while the new National Clandestine Service facility is being built in Chantilly.”

  “What?! Are you nuts?!” Nick glared at Wolf. “Scott, this is crazy. You can’t go after Richards. He’s the new Director of NCS.”

  “How does it feel…? Saying that.”

  Nick blinked a couple of times as if he hadn’t thought of it like that before.

  “Director Burgess; dead. Ruth; dead. Thomas; dead…hell, everyone unlucky enough to be working in NCS that night…dead, dead, fucking dead.”

  “You’re right,” he muttered with venom. “Richards doesn’t deserve to be breathing, much less having the old man’s title.”

  Wolf knew both Nick and John had avoided facing the reality that their boss—Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service—had been murdered by a pencil-pushing Homeland Security traitor. But Richards was nothing but a pawn of Combine; a tool to take over leadership.

  “Still…Richards is on lockdown. Baynebridge, military and CIA internal security are going to have him buttoned up better than the President’s security detail,” Nick said.

  Wolf nodded. “Yep.”

  “Then why would you waste resources and exposure going after him?”

  Wolf smiled. “I’m not going after him… I just need the appearance that I’m after him.”

  “Why?!”

  Wolf turned to Nick. “Because he’s sitting on the National Intelligence Data Collection Center.”
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  Nick lifted an eyebrow, obviously intrigued. “Go on.”

  “We lost access to all intelligence networks when Langley blew. We’re blind except for the handful of systems we’ve managed to hack through in the last two months,” Wolf said, returning his attention to the road. “If I can access NIDCC, then we’ll have the backup data for every intelligence agency in the country. We’ll know where everyone is, all the time without wasting SEALs on stakeouts. We’ll be back in the loop.”

  Nick turned away and stared out the window, but Wolf saw him mouth the words “Holy shit”.

  “Is that worth it?”

  Nick looked back at Wolf. “Scott, how far have you thought this through?”

  “About as far as Combine being nothing but an annotation on a bunch of ornately carved gravestones.”

  “How?”

  “One step at a time, brother… But first, we need to know where Richards is.”

  “How are you going to find that out?” Nick asked with slightly less cynicism in his tone than a few seconds earlier.

  “We’re going to have a chat with the new assistant director of Homeland Security…Glenn Gold.”

  Nick smiled. It had been Glenn Gold who had knocked John unconscious, leaving Nick to find him only seconds before the explosion ripped through the NCS sub-floors of Langley. The blast had killed nearly everyone who had been working on the two lower levels after hours.

  “Alright,” Nick said, turning forward again. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  Wolf smiled. Nick was on board—now all he had to do was keep John from undermining him.

  **

  6:30 a.m. on April 24th, —Patuxent River State Park, Howard County, Maryland

  WOLF sat against a tree on a hillside, high above a Homeland Security black-site. The building below was nothing more than a metal covered barn with a generator in back. Petty Officer Hawkins had texted Wolf earlier the night before, letting him know he had located Gold’s security team and was following them.

  Wolf and Nick arrived at the overlook where Hawkins had parked his SUV and handed off the lunch box sized device Wolf had built. Hawkins had been gone for nearly an hour as they sat, waiting.