Brian ejected the magazine and cleared the chamber. “Ten millimeter?”
“That’s right. FBI-issue. Makes nice holes. The Bureau went back to it after Inspector O’Day had that shoot-out with the bad guys—you know, Uncle Jack’s little girl.”
Brian remembered the story well: the attack on Katie Ryan at her school shortly after her dad had become President, the shoot-out, the kills.
“That dude had his shit wired pretty tight,” he said. “And you know; he’s not even an ex-Marine. He was a Navy puke before he turned cop. That’s what they said at Quantico, anyway.”
“They did a training tape of the job. I met him once, just shook his hand with twenty other guys. Son of a bitch can shoot. He talked about waiting for your chance and making the first shot count. He double-tapped both their heads.”
“How did he keep his cool?” The rescue of Katie Ryan had struck home for both Caruso boys. She was, after all, their first cousin, and a nice little girl, the image of her mother.
“Hey, you smelled the smoke over there. How did you keep yours?”
“Training. I had Marines to look after, bro.”
Together, they manhandled Dominic’s things inside. Brian showed the way upstairs. They had separate bedrooms, next to each other. Then they came back to the kitchen. Both got coffee and sat at the kitchen table.
“So, how’s life in the Marine Corps, Aldo?”
“Gonna make major soon, Enzo. Got myself a Silver Star for what I did over there—wasn’t that big a deal, really, I just did what they trained me to do. One of my men got shot up, but he’s okay now. We didn’t bag the guy we were after—he wasn’t in a mood to surrender, so Gunny Sullivan sent him off to see Allah—but we got two live ones and they talked some, gave us some good information, the Intel guys told me.”
“What did you get the pretty ribbon for?” Dominic asked pointedly.
“Mainly for staying alive. I shot three of the bad guys myself. Weren’t even hard shots, really. I just took ’em. Later they asked me if I had any nightmares about it. The Marine Corps just has too many doctors around—and they’re all squids.”
“Bureau’s the same way, but I blew it off. No bad dreams about that bastard. The poor little girl. I should’ve shot his dick off.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“‘Cause that doesn’t kill your ass, Aldo. But three in the heart does.”
“You didn’t shoot him on the spur of the moment, did you?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“And that’s why you’re here, Special Agent Caruso,” a man said, entering the room. He was over six feet, a very fit fifty, both of the others thought.
“Who are you, sir?” Brian asked.
“Pete Alexander,” the man answered. “I was supposed to meet you last—”
“No, actually you weren’t, but that’s what we told the general.” Alexander sat down with his own cup of coffee.
“So, who are you, then?” Dominic asked.
“I’m your training officer.”
“Just you?” Brian asked.
“Training for what?” Dominic asked at the same time.
“No, not just me, but I’m the one who’ll be here all the time. And the nature of the training will show you what you’re training for,” he answered. “Okay, you want to know about me. I graduated Yale thirty years ago, in political science. I was even a member of Skull and Bones. You know, the boys’ club that conspiracy theorists like to prattle about. Jesus, like people in their late teens can really accomplish anything beyond getting laid, on a good Friday night.” His brown eyes and the look in them hadn’t come from a college, however, even an Ivy League one. “Back in the old days, the Agency liked to recruit people from Yale and Harvard and Dartmouth. The kids there have gotten over it. They all want to be merchant bankers now and make money. I worked twenty-five years in the Clandestine Service, and then I got recruited by The Campus. Been with them ever since.”
“The Campus? What’s that?” the Marine asked. Alexander noticed that Dominic Caruso did not. He was listening and watching very closely. Brian would never stop being a Marine, and Dominic would never stop being FBI. They never did. It was both good and bad, in both cases.
“That is a privately funded intelligence service.”
“Privately funded?” Brian asked. “How the hell—”
“You’ll see how it works later, and when you do, you will be surprised how easily it’s done. What concerns you right here and right now is what they do.”
“They kill people,” Dominic said immediately. The words came out seemingly of their own accord.
“Why do you think that?” Alexander asked innocently.
“The outfit is small. We’re the only people here, judging by the parking pad outside. I’m not experienced enough to be an expert agent. All I did was whack somebody who needed it, and next day I’m up in Headquarters talking to an assistant director, and a couple of days after that I drive to D.C. and get sent down here. This place is very, very special, very, very small, and it has top-level approval for whatever it does. You’re not selling U.S. Savings Bonds here, are you?”
“The book on you is that you have good analytical ability,” Alexander said. “Can you learn to keep your mouth shut?”
“It’s not needed in this particular place, I should think. But, yeah, I know how, when the situation calls for it,” Dominic said.
“Okay, here’s the first speech. You guys know what ‘black’ means, right? It means a program or project that is not acknowledged by the government. People pretend it doesn’t exist. The Campus takes that one step further: We really do not exist. There is not a single written document in the possession of any government employee that has a single word about us. From this moment on, you two young gentlemen do not exist. Oh, sure, you, Captain—or is it Major already? Caruso, you get a paycheck that’s going to be direct-deposited into whatever bank account you set up this week, but you are no longer a Marine. You are on detached duty, whose nature is unknown. And you, Special Agent Dominic Caruso—”
“I know. Gus Werner told me. They dug a hole and pulled it in after them.”
Alexander nodded. “You will both leave your official identification documents, dog tags, everything, here before you leave. You can keep your names, maybe, but a name is just a couple of words, and nobody believes a name in this business anyway. That’s the funny part about my time in the field with the Agency. Once on a job, I changed names without thinking about it. Damned embarrassing when I realized it. Like an actor: All of a sudden I’m Macbeth when I’m supposed to be Hamlet. No harm came of it, though, and I didn’t croak at the end of the play.”
“What, exactly, will we be doing?” This was Brian.
“Mostly, you’ll be doing investigative work. Tracking money. The Campus is particularly good at that. You’ll find out how and why later. You will probably deploy together. You, Dominic, will do most of the heavy lifting on the investigative side. You, Brian, will back him up on the muscle side, and along the way you’ll learn to do what—what was it you called him a little while ago?”
“Oh, you mean Enzo? I call him that because he had a heavy foot when he got his driver’s license. You know, like Enzo Ferrari.”
Dominic pointed to his brother and laughed. “He’s Aldo because he dresses like a dweeb. Like in that wine commercial, Aldo Cella: ‘He’s not a slave to fashion’? It’s a family joke.”
“Okay, go to Brooks Brothers and dress better,” Pete Alexander told Brian. “Your cover mainly will be as a businessman or a tourist. So, you’ll have to dress neatly, but not like the Prince of Wales. You’ll both let your hair grow out, especially you, Aldo.”
Brian rubbed a hand over his head stubble. It marked him anywhere in the civilized world as a United States Marine. It could have been worse. Army Rangers were even more radical in the hair department. Brian would look like a fairly normal human being in a month or so. “Damn, I’ll have to buy a comb.”
“What’s the plan?”
“For today, just relax and settle in. Tomorrow we wake up early and make sure you two are in decent physical shape. Then there’s weapons proficiency—and the sit-down classwork. You’re both computer-literate, I presume.”
“Why do you ask?” This was Brian.
“The Campus mainly works like a virtual office. You’ll be issued computers with built-in modems, and that’s how you’ll communicate with the home office.”
“What about security?” Dominic asked.
“The machines have pretty good security built in. If there’s a way to crack them, nobody’s found it yet.”
“That’s good to know,” Enzo observed, dubiously. “They use computers in the Corps, Aldo?”