Chapter 6 — The First Visitor

The television in her room didn’t work, and she didn’t have any roommates to talk to, so Samantha lay in bed wondering who would visit her the next day. She wasn’t sure who she wanted to see. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she didn’t want to see anyone except the Chaplain … or maybe her sister.

Her brush with death had given her a fresh start in life. She was tired of the pain and the stress and the sacrifice of the last several years. For just a moment, she even considered leaving that life behind. However, she was part of a team now and that meant everything to her. Maybe when she explained to the Chaplain how she felt he would let her come in from the field and do coordination or research or training or something.

She cuddled her second pillow, feeling the cool material against her arms, and drifted off into a deep sleep. She dreamed of a childhood where her mother wasn’t a drunk. There was no hiding under her bed, no worrying about her next beating. The other girls in school liked her and even invited her to be a cheerleader. The boys treated her with respect instead of like the town pump, bringing her flowers and taking her on real dates. Then the car her date was driving was hit by an IED and they were flung into the sky. A large falcon swooped in to gouge out her eyes.

She was startled awake by a loud knock on her door. A severe-looking man walked into the room. He was clean-shaven and his hair was fashionably styled and neatly trimmed. He wore a nice aftershave, but it left a funny taste in her mouth. He was wearing a hospital orderly outfit, but a white shirt and black tie peeked out at his neck. She looked at his feet and saw he was wearing black wing-tip shoes. Samantha concluded that her first visitor was a federal agent who had delusions of being a spy.

“Samantha? I am Agent Black. I’m the agent who extracted you from Ohio. And I wanted to see how you were doing and maybe chat with you for a while.”

“Fuck. What time is it?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “It’s not even six yet. Aren’t you a little overanxious, Agent Black?”

The man pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat down on it. “Well, I won’t stay long, but I wanted to speak to you first. And I wanted to make sure that you fully understand the situation before you talked to anyone else.”

Samantha realized that now that she was going to be lied to. Hell, she was probably going to be lied to by everyone she met the next few days. “The situation is that I got sloppy on a deep-cover assignment and was badly injured. I almost bled to death. You brought me in out of the cold, and now I am in the rehab wing of a military hospital in Tennessee.”

“Do you remember the particulars of your last assignment, or of the other assignments you’ve had since you’ve been back in the states?”

“I’m afraid I’m not authorized to have that conversation with you, Agent Black,” Samantha said quickly, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“Okay, let me go at it from a different angle. Has the Chaplain contacted you yet? And have you heard from any Raptor since your injury?”

Uh oh! Samantha really did not want to have this conversation. She had no reason to trust this man, and a little voice inside warned her to stay hidden behind her hypoxic brain injury. She would tell him nothing.

“Okay, who the hell are you and what do you want?” she snapped, suddenly wide awake. She thumbed the bed controls and moved into a sitting position.

The agent leaned forward. “I want to discuss your chain of command. And I want to discuss your future.”

“I already have a chain of command,” she growled. “I report to the Chaplain. I’ve reported to him since I got out of Basic Training.”

So much for keeping her mouth shut. She needed to work at reestablishing her self-control.

Agent Black tried to put on his most calming expression. “The Chaplain sent me. He doesn’t go out in public anymore. I will be your contact going forward.”

“Well, if he won’t go out in public then I guess I’ll have to go see him.”

Samantha sighed inwardly. She knew that she sounded like a petulant child.

“I’ll see what I can do about that," said the agent. “But first, we have to get you out of here. You’ve, um, done some great work in the past, Samantha, but there are elements in the government that don’t have our nation’s best interests at heart. Elements who want to weaken our counter-terrorism capabilities. And, um, they are the same elements who cried like spoiled brats when the Patriot Act was passed. They are going to try and make you out to be a psychopathic veteran who went completely off the reservation. And, um, if they have their way, you’ll be transferred from here to federal prison.”

“The Chaplain won’t let that happen to me!” she spat, immediately regretting her burst of emotion.

“Do you know the story about the faithful man who was trapped on his roof during a flood?” asked Agent Black, leaning back.

When Samantha didn’t respond, he continued. “He sat on is a roof, um, praying for God to save him. A rescue boat came by and, um, he refused to get in, saying he was waiting for God’s intervention. And then a helicopter flew over and he waved them off, saying that God would send an angel to take care of him. And, um, the water kept rising, and soon the man drowned.

“When he came to stand before God, the man asked why an angel hadn’t come down to save him. ‘Well,’ said God, ‘first I sent a boat to rescue you. And then, um I sent a helicopter to rescue you. When you turned both of those down, um, I figured you were a total idiot and I’d be doing mankind a favor if I let you drown.’”

“And what does that have to do with me?” Samantha asked.

“The Chaplain sent me to rescue you. Don’t be such a fucking idiot. Accept my help or, um, you’ll be left to drown.”

Apparently, things had changed quite a bit while she was in a coma, and she had no idea what was really going on. Well, she wasn’t going to make any decisions without doing research, and now was as good a time as any to get started. “Okay. So, what kind of work would you have for me?” she asked, feigning interest.

Agent Black smiled, believing she had bought his story. “Simple stuff at first. For instance, we need someone to infiltrate the fuck-heads protesting the Keystone Pipeline. And we need to know what makes them tick, who’s behind them, and how to bring them down.”

She thought back to her training, and how it would apply to an assignment like that. “And you’ll want me to do some interrogations, and to bring them down if I can, right?”

“Absolutely!”

“Even if I got my hands a little messy doing it?”

Agent Black nodded. “We both know that’s what you were trained for and you’ve repeatedly proved just how good you are at it. You have ice water in your veins instead of blood, and, um, that makes you a very special asset.”

Asset, is it? Samantha forced a smile. “Well, this does sound like something up my alley.” She paused a moment to make it look like she was seriously considering the offer. “I’ll need more information, of course, but maybe we can work something out.”

Agent Black got up and walked to the door. “Good. I’ll go and report this to the Chaplin. And we’ll talk again, soon. And, in the meantime, we, um, did not have this conversation, you’ve never seen me. And most of all, you remember nothing since you left Iraq. Is that clear, soldier?”

“Yes, sir.” That wouldn’t be hard for her. In truth, the last really clear memory she had was getting blown up in a Humvee while riding through the Iraq desert. It wasn’t so much that she had amnesia, but everything since then was a little foggy.