Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak…"
Special Agent Ray Cardoza squelched the radio's volume. The police scanner, also, had long ago been given the silent treatment.
"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak," Cardoza echoed with derision. Requesting that Molly Hatchet song was some asshole listener's attempt at irony. Even the rock and roll stations were getting into circus mode by soliciting requests that related to tonight's execution.
Cardoza was sick of the whole thing and wished it would be over. Perhaps the stress of waiting for the needle would put Overland in a grand mal seizure and cheat NBC of its glory.
Aw, wouldn't that be a shame? The FBI agent thought of NBC execs in their Ivory Tower when they got the news, popping Tums and Xanax like beer nuts.
Cardoza knew why he was so bitter, though. It wasn't merely the Barnum and Bailey ambience that surrounded The Taker's execution or the Theater of the Absurd to which most people had been reduced.
It was the simple fact that he had been left out of it.
It was bad enough being stuck in a resident agency 20 miles from the Boston field office. The cruelest twist of all was that the execution was to occur not three miles from his office in Eastbridge and he wasn't even considered for the FBI detail for Senator Forrest.
Cardoza, needless to say, was in a mood that would scare the shit out of a badger.
His long, thick fingers drummed on the leather-bound steering wheel of his Grand Cherokee, thinking of all the months he'd spent at Quantico with basic training, going to negotiator school listening to that aging, faded superstar Mike Brodie, working his way up to Special Agent… all for what?
To work at some outpost of the Boston field office chasing down dog shit leads for bogus missing person's or insurance fraud cases that were unworthy of Boston's attention?
Sometimes, sitting in the two room resident agency that was sandwiched between a tax attorney's office and a maid service, Cardoza would feel that all he needed to complete the Sam Spade image was a half bottle of rye on the desk and a smartass, underpaid secretary.
Cardoza didn't drink and he didn't even have the smartass secretary. It was a one man operation answerable to remote superiors whose names and faces he could barely remember.
On second thought, I'm not Sam Spade- I'm Dances With Wolves. Lt. Dunbar reporting for duties for which he's vastly overqualified, Sir.
The solitary agent then realized that he was in very poor company and turned the radio back on, changing to a station with less attitude and rock 'n' roll. As expected, half of Eastbridge was glued to the tube or the Internet and the other half was at the prison taking one side or another. The small town was deader than Hogan's Alley at night.
Mixed feelings of sharp memories came over Ray Cardoza before he could realize that that was a poorly chosen simile.
If the 28 year-old Special Agent was shunted to Podunk, Massachusetts for any specific reason, it wasn't based on his marksmanship. Back at Quantico, he could secure Hogan's Alley faster than anyone in his graduating class. A few admirers had even begun comparing him to the legendary Jelly Bryce, the best and fastest gunman that the FBI had ever produced. Bryce would put on exhibitions for groups ranging from law enforcement agencies to Cub Scouts. His favorite trick was in signing his name, DA Bryce, with tracer bullets shot into the sky then going back and dotting the "D" and "A".
Cardoza was certain that he would've given the World War II-era special agent a run for his money.
Yet, in spite of all the training and the applications to the HRT, CIRG, SWAT, and other tactical groups within the Bureau, Cardoza was continually passed over for such action-oriented assignments. He knew that his psychological evaluations were borderline but not bad enough to keep him from shouldering an automatic weapon in the line of duty.
It was Brodie.
The young agent and his former hostage negotiations instructor in Quantico had gotten off on the wrong foot from the first day of class. Cardoza resisted gripping the steering wheel as he passed Varrick Prison. It was lit up like a baseball diamond during a night game. A helicopter, obviously a news chopper, circled above as gracefully as a helicopter can, throwing its own spotlight in with the prison's. It reminded Cardoza of a fat, noisy buzzard waiting for carrion. The image of a buzzard turned his thoughts back to Mike Brodie. Memories inflicted themselves on him like an old football injury. No matter how many pages he tore from the calendar at the beginning of each new month, Cardoza keenly associated virtually anything with the man who had betrayed him.
Cardoza could tell immediately that Michael Brodie had convinced himself to have a shitty day. It was rather obvious to everyone in the know, which was all the agents in the class, why today would not be a good day for the former negotiator. The Salt Flat disaster was still a fresh memory to him and being shunted to a little classroom that looked out onto Hogan's Alley was obviously going to take some adjusting. Despite his famed powers of empathy, Brodie, Cardoza rightly guessed, was not going to be consoled by the fact that it was also everyone else's first day. At the end of the seven week-long class, they'd be reassigned or sent back to their home field offices. Teach would have to remain behind for the next group.
Ray Cardoza wasn't too crazy about being instructed by Mike Brodie, either, but at this time, the Bureau's former CHN was the only one teaching the advanced hostage negotiations course that the young agent needed to pass to become a Special Agent. His career ambitions still superceded his hatred of Brodie. Whether he meant to or not, Brodie began challenging that from Day One on.
The classroom was a part of Hogan's Alley, another functional prop put in by the course's designers to make the mock town seem even more realistic. They did such a good job that Quantico lore has a contractor asking if he could buy a car on the fake used car lot. Among the other real props were stores and a professional, fully functional television studio from which ITSU made broadcasts on behalf of the FBI Training Network.
The classroom, aside from its unusual logistics, was nondescript in its peculiarly federal way. The sheet rock walls were painted a dull shade of semi-gloss beige, the chairs as hard as titanium, and every hint of personality had been expunged, save for the collective impersonal efficiency of the Federal Bureau of Investigation immortalized by Ephram Zimbalist, Jr. and Quinn-Martin Productions. It would take a while, if ever, for Fox Mulder's quirky presence to become the new norm. The suspended ceiling hiding the wiring that ran through the complex like a virus betrayed not one pencil hole or water stain.
However, boys will be boys and Cardoza couldn't help but notice, to his reluctant amusement, the graffiti written by long-departed students who doodled on their desks during bored or lax moments. That made sense, as their notebooks were subject to review by their instructors at any time. "Ten years as a NYC narc for this?" asked one indolent agent of posterity.
Brodie, despite his obvious distaste for the job, was there before any of his students, writing his name on the blackboard in case his infamy wasn't as endemic as it really was. Wiping his surprisingly small and delicate-looking hands of chalk dust, he turned around and finally addressed the class.
"Now you know who I am and, believe it or not, I already know who you are." It should've come as no surprise to any of the agents present that Brodie was famous for doing background checks on all people with whom he worked. Not all negotiators bothered or could find the time to do so, but Brodie was famous for making it his business to know who, and what, he had to work with. Like any conscientious teacher, he was weeding out the troublemakers before they'd even started, maybe even making profiles of the students. "My job, obviously, is to teach you advanced hostage negotiations from Stockholm to the present day. For those of you wondering, yes, The Salt Flat disaster will be used as a case scenario. In fact, it's required, not optional."
Some of the agent-trainees nodded politely while others remained expressionless but Cardoza knew what was being silently screamed by every mind there- "Man, why are you doing this to yourself? Why don't you just eat your Browning, old dude?"
Even in the most carefully balanced and professional of situations, such as an FBI training class, some friction is bound to exist between instructor and trainee and no amount of screening or protocol can completely filter out the skepticism and disrespect that sometimes bounces between desk and podium. Brodie let everyone know by the defensiveness on his face that to broach the subject of The Salt Flat disaster except to ask, at the appropriate time, a pertinent question, was academic suicide. As in the field, Brodie had unmistakably taken charge from minute one.
Cardoza felt he had no right to be so self-righteous, despite what both men had lost that day.
"How objective will you be in evaluating your own scenario?" Cardoza's voice and audacious question surprised even him and he was almost sorry the moment the words slapped against the beige walls. Almost sorry. Brodie's imperious look at him only prompted the young agent to go on. "I mean, in the interests of academic fairness, you will be totally forthcoming about the events of The Salt Flat disaster, right, Special Agent Brodie?"
"Agent Cardozo, is it?"
"Cardoza, sir."
"Yes, of course… Cardoza. Well, rest assured, Agent Cardoza, that you will be given a fair and complete analysis of every hostage scenario that we will cover in the next seven weeks. I assure you that I am still a professional, despite the current Bureau zeitgeist." Before Cardoza could respond, Brodie had already turned his back on him and advanced toward the blackboard.
During the seven weeks that they'd spent together, things went from bad to worse. The bottom line was that Cardoza, like a young lion, was challenging the old lion's pride. Not only did Brodie repel every charge against his authority and judgment with ease, he'd barely passed his troublesome student.
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