The Suppressor by Erik Carter (best free novels .txt) 📗

Falcon laughed heartily, hands on his knees. After a moment of this, he straightened up and took the mirror from Jake, placed it back on top of the monitor. He returned his hands to his pockets.

“So with your new, completely unrecognizable face, we’re gonna leave you right where you are, in Pensacola. Assets are spread throughout the country, regionally, and we’ve needed someone in Florida for some time. We’ve stretched our Atlanta Asset really thin for several years. You’re gonna be our Florida man.” He laughed. “You’ve heard about that, right? The whole ‘Florida Man’ thing?”

Jake nodded.

Of course he had.

Florida was a quirky place that attracted a lot of quirky people. As such, the “Florida Man” phenomenon had arisen—a preponderance of whacky headlines, rather embarrassing to residents of the Sunshine State, that were then collected and shared nationally and internationally.

Florida Man Tackles Gator to Regain Stolen Can of Beer

Florida Man Attempts Robbery Using Green Plastic Water Gun

Florida Man Backs Trailer Into Police Headquarters

Falcon had started chuckling again. The guy sure did laugh a lot.

“You’ll cover most Florida assignments. But that doesn’t mean you’ll always be in the sand and sun. We’ll need you elsewhere, as needs demand. So you might be in Tampa for a week. Then the Keys for a month or two. Then you might find yourself in the middle of Montana for a while. Make sense?”

Jake nodded.

“And before you get any bright ideas about taking advantage of our generosity and making a run for the border or something, do know that we’re always watching you. We are the Watchers, after all. There’s a GPS dot in your arm.”

Jake looked at the small bandage on his forearm.

Ah. Mystery solved.

“Now, it’s a tradition of ours to let Assets choose their new first name,” Falcon said. “What’ll yours be?”

Jake thought.

And a name immediately came to his mind.

A word.

“Silence,” Jake said.

Falcon pursed his lips, clicked his teeth. “Silence? What the hell kind of name is that? Maybe Ryan? Sam? Gordon?”

C.C. in the ocean, to her knees, the waves tossing the bottom of her sarong, beckoning him toward her, the water, so warm.

Quiet, she’d said. Be here. With me. In this moment. Right now. This moment. Silence.

Jake swallowed.

“Silence,” he said again.

Falcon shrugged. “Silence it is.” He sighed, stroked his mustache. “You’re not gonna be a problem child for me, are you? I put my neck out to bring you in. All right, all right. I usually throw some mundane, standard last name to go with the first name a new Asset chooses. Let’s call you…”

He trailed off and looked toward the drop tile ceiling. His mustache twisted as he thought.

“Jones. Silence Jones.”

Silence Jones.

It had a ring to it.

“You’ll be Asset 23. Or, A-23.”

C.C. would have been alarmed. Among her many esoteric interests was numerology, and a few months ago she’d told him about the 23 Enigma, a phenomenon that suggested the number twenty-three had a negative aura.

A cursed pair of digits…

That was a hell of a number to be assigned as an assassin with a short life-expectancy.

“I also have the great honor of bestowing codenames,” Falcon said. “You know, typical tough-sounding things, like sports teams or fighter pilot call signs. ‘Shark.’ ‘Maddog.’” His eyes twinkled with a thought. “And since you’re gonna call yourself Silence, your codename will be Suppressor.”

He grinned broadly.

“Silencer. Suppressor. Get it? Eh? Eh?”

Yes, yes. Another name for a gun’s silencer was a suppressor.

Amusing, but not as hilarious as Falcon seemed to think.

“Here’s our offer,” Falcon continued. “You killed four men. Join us as an Asset, or go to prison. Simple as that. The offer is provisional upon passing your training, of course, as well as successful completion of your first assignment. And, because I’m such a generous fella, I’ll sweeten the deal even more—your first assignment will be finishing what you started: we need you to eliminate Lukas Burton.

“This is your last chance to bail, no strings attached. Do you accept our offer?”

The man in the hospital bed, the man who been Jake Rowe, the man who was now in a strange, momentary limbo between identities, considered the proposal.

They wanted him to be an assassin.

Could he do that?

Could he be a killer?

Immediately his mind offered hesitancy, put a wall in front of him, reminded him that he didn’t even kill spiders he found in his living room.

But then he thought of the Watchers’ mission that Falcon had just described. Benevolent killings. Righting wrongs.

He thought of people he’d encountered during his one year as a police officer. Bastards who’d gotten away with rotten, horrible things. People who couldn’t be touched, even when they looked you in the eye and told you without telling you that they’d done it.

That’s right, they’d say with a cold expression, pinched eyebrows, a cocky grin. I did it, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

C.C. had once told him her view on sponsored killings, a view that had surprised him. Murder, she’d said, was supposedly the most irrefutable, universally accepted offense among all cultures of humanity. And yet all nations went to war. And many nations had policies of capital punishment. One person’s justified killing was another person’s murder, and the definition wasn’t as clear-cut as people would hope, C.C. had said.

He leaned his face toward his tethered hand and ran his fingers along his cheek, felt the sharp ridge of that prominent cheekbone once more. This face wasn’t his. But, then, the name wasn’t his either. Silence Jones. This future, also, wasn’t his, a future without C.C.

The old face, the prior name, the future with C.C.—all of that had been Zack Rowe.

If he was a new person, then he could take on a new life.

He could become a righteous assassin.

And, besides, they were giving him his chance to finish off Burton.

With resources and support.

He looked at Falcon. Swallowed.

“Let’s do it.”

Falcon grinned.

“Welcome aboard, Silence Jones.”

Chapter Fifty

Laswell paused, giving Briggs a chance to digest all that had been said. The point in the story at which he’d initiated the new