BARE HUNTER

Walking into work, I stopped at Sharon’s desk to thank her for the nice evening we had. “Hey, you. Thanks for last night.”

Hanging up the phone, she gave me one of her heart- melting smiles and said, “That was the closest thing to a date I’ve had since my divorce. Thank you, Ted.”

“Wow. Ten years? That’s a crime. How about a real date next week sometime?”

“Are you sure you want to be seen with an old lady?” she asked, half joking.

“Old? You aren’t old. Sharon, you’re beautiful. I would love to be seen with you.”

Her face turned red, and she stuttered, “Oh, oh, that’s so nice of you to say.”

“Well, it’s true. You name the time and place, and if you’re more comfortable meeting me, that’s all good,” I said, turning to the office.

The rest of the day flew by as I thought of what it might be like to get close to Sharon. Maybe we could be friends with benefits if she wasn’t ready for anything more. I was down for that. I was imagining taking off her bra, when Greg tapped on my cubicle and motioned to me to follow him; so much for my great day.

“Ted. I’ve got all the equipment, now you have to find a place where we can get good reception,” he said quietly, as we walked to the elevators. Once outside, under the building’s awning to stay dry, he continued, “I’ll need you to stay late at your desk, pretend you’re working on files. I have bugs for their phones and a split router to send their internet activity to the vehicle with the recording equipment.”

“I’m not a techie, Greg.”

“It doesn’t matter. It practically installs itself. What I need from you is the logistics of where to set up the receivers. I reserved a space in the parking garage near the IT department's outside wall. The equipment can go there, and no one will think anything of it.”

“It seems as though you already have this worked out. What do you need me for?” I asked.

“You have to set up the equipment in the van and run a test to make sure it’s working. On Monday we are getting some new files from the Department of Defense and that’s when I think they’ll make their move.”

“O—kay, boss. I’ll do what I can.”

“After everyone leaves, we’ll set the bugs and the router, and I’ll have the van in place by then. You better head out now and get something to eat. We’ll be at it until we get it right.” As we walked back into the building, he looked at me with alarm, “Hey, Ted, your arm is bleeding. Better take care of that.”

Shit. My other arm was bleeding down to my wrist. I slipped into the men’s room on the first floor and peeled back my sleeve to reveal several deep scratches on my forearms. I washed them with soap and water and dried them off, then tried to wash the blood off the sleeve. What the hell was going on?

As I dried my sleeve under the hand dryer, a tall, rugged-looking guy walked in, nodding his head to acknowledge me, and stood at the urinals. “What ya got there, sport? Looks like blood. Salt. Salt works best.”

“Oh, um, thank you. Don’t know how I got these scratches,” I explained, not knowing why the hell I was explaining myself to a total stranger.

I left with a wet sleeve, not feeling comfortable around my new buddy. A migraine was beginning to hammer in my head, small, rock hammer size right now. When I reached Sharon’s desk in reception, I stopped and asked, “Sharon, this is going to sound crazy. We went out last night, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“What time did we finish at Vince’s?”

“About one in the morning. You don’t look well, Ted. What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. Never mind. Thanks.”

She was looking at me with concern when I left her desk. Phyllis wasn’t in today. She was probably hungover as hell, and I wondered who went home with her. Thank God I had been with Sharon last night. I gathered my coat and cell phone from my cubicle, returned to the basement, and got out at the garage level. Finding my car, I looked more carefully at the back bumper and realized the damage was much worse than I had thought initially. Damn it. This was a couple thousand dollars’ worth of repair work and I’d settled for a quick $700.

I was certain the old truck that plowed into me was blue, but the paint on my bumper was a bright red. It was raining hard. Maybe I didn’t see it clearly this morning. I pulled out of the garage and headed for Taco Bell. Ordering a ten-pack meal with a drink at the drive-thru, I parked in the lot and took my time eating, popping a Rizatriptan, to hold off the wolves for the evening.

I didn’t believe in coincidences, so I took out a pen and the little notebook I began keeping when my memory started having gaps.

#1, Greg asked me to do him a favor

#2, Night terrors come back

#3, Someone breaks into my house

#4, The accident

#5, These feelings of guilt over nothing.

#6, IT? Do they suspect me?

#7, Cap Howard tells Greg about Wardak

#8, Cap wants me to report to VA

#9, Backpack with bloody clothes

# 10, Unexplained injuries.

My mind was swimming. This had to wait. I finished the tacos and slugged down most of the drink before driving back to work. I sat in the parking garage until six to make sure everyone from our office had left. Then I took the elevator up to our floor and used my keycard to enter the empty office.

Greg was sitting at my desk. I didn’t like that. He looked up, startled, when I walked in. “So, you ready to do this?”

“Tell me first, why do you suspect the IT department?” I asked.

“They have access to everything, whereas everyone else, including you, only get bits and pieces of what we do here. The Pentagon, The Department of Defense, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and so on. We can’t let them leak this material. What looks like innocent numbers for mundane items isn’t so mundane when looking at cost analysis of weapons parts.”

“I see,” I said, although, honestly, I thought the best thing to do would be to go directly to the Feds and damned our company and jobs. If this was a national security issue, we needed to cover our rear and let the experts handle it.

“Let’s hit it,” he said, jumping up from my desk and grabbing a couple of boxes. Handing me one, he said, “This is the splitter. We attach it to the back of the regular router, and they won’t even notice it.”

He keyed our way into the inner sanctum of the IT department and checked the router behind the desks. I ripped open the box, removed the device, and read the instructions, which were in Chinese. Wait. No. The other side was English, sort of. I followed the directions and attached it to the corner of the router, unsure if something that small without antennas would work. Amazing.

He unscrewed the handsets of the house phones and slid the bugging devices into the tangle of wires. He didn’t seem to be confused by it. I suspected he knew more than he let on about this type of work. My Spidey Senses had been activated and when I met with Cap Howard I had lots of questions for him. When that was done, his phone buzzed. He checked his messages and said, “Shit. I have to talk with the surveillance guys. I’ll give you the receivers and transponders. Can you set them up in the van? It’s parked on the fifth level, a handicap-reserved spot. Grey Econoline.”

We went to his office, where he collected the rest of the equipment and tossed me the van keys. We rode the elevator together and parted ways at the parking garage. I hiked up to the fifth level and saw the van. If I had to guess, it looked like it was directly behind the wall of the building where the IT offices were.

I clicked open the door and was amazed at the sophisticated equipment he had acquired for this job. The back of the van was set up like an office, with big-screen computers lining a counter and big, leather gaming chairs, each with a headset resting on it. Internal antennas were running along the van's interior, and a separate listening device with a small screen and dial was set up between computers. There was even a portable refrigerator and a coffee pot on a corner shelf. Whatever was going on, Greg was sparing no expense for it. This made me wonder if the higher-ups were running the show, leaving the dirty work to Greg, who had passed it off to me.

The sooner I figured this out, the sooner I could put this behind me. I unpacked the equipment and lined everything up on an empty counter. I wired the transponder to the roof over the driver’s side of the van, in line with the brick wall, making sure it could be turned in all directions. Then, I took the bug receivers and installed them onto the control panel of the listening device. One on each side. The computer setup was as easy as plugging in a mouse or keyboard, and soon, it was ready for a trial run.

Where the fuck was Greg and his “experts”?

I waited until 9 o’clock, and when Greg failed to show, I locked the van and found my car. I wasn’t staying around in a deserted parking garage with strange shit going on.

I stopped at an electronics shop just before closing time on my way home and picked up two burner phones. One for Greg and one for Captain Howard.