The Armageddon Virus - Chapter 2

(2)


Thursday, July 15th, 2004

Special Agent Jake Sutton sat alone at his desk in his fourth floor office in the FBI’s Washington D.C. headquarters, rummaging through a drawer. A small, nearly empty cardboard box sat on top of the desk next to a steaming white coffee mug emblazoned with a blue FBI emblem. A new telephone unit he had requested four months ago was sitting on his desk when he arrived this morning, just in time for his last day. “Typical”, he muttered out loud. His computer tower, monitor, and printer had been removed from his office over the weekend, with the keyboard and other accessories piled on the floor in the corner of the office. It was FBI policy to impound the hard drives of all computers and laptops of any agent who was reassigned from an intelligence, or otherwise designated “sensitive”, position the same day their reassignment was announced. That was eight days ago in Sutton’s case. I guess to make up for being late they just took the entire system, he mused to himself. Typical.

Sutton noticed how big his desk looked when it wasn’t cluttered. The office looked bigger too. The obligatory picture of the President hung alone on the wall facing his desk. It looked strangely out of place without the photo of his FBI academy graduation ceremony in its oversized frame next to it to give it symmetry. Sutton had only recently gotten comfortable with his office, having occupied it for only five months—and after raising hell to get it. He had originally been assigned to a standard cubical workstation. It was functional but didn’t afford him either the security or stature he felt his position required and deserved. He was content with his cubical at first, but as the months wore on he began to notice that others who were below him in rank, and pay, had their own offices—so why shouldn’t he? He rationalized his unusual surge of pettiness to the job dissatisfaction he had been trying to ignore.

The drawings his five year old nephew Johnny made for him when he came to town with his father Jeremy, Sutton’s older brother by two years, a few months back had been torn from the back wall and were laying on the floor near a waste basket. It was the first time he had seen his brother and Johnny since he had moved to D.C. E-mail and an occasional phone call had replaced their frequent visits and monthly campouts in the summer. Jacob and Jeremy had been inseparable growing-up in suburban Memphis, being more like best friends than brothers. Both were starting forwards on their high school basket ball team and played side-by-side Jeremy’s senior year, when Jake made varsity as a sophomore. The Sutton tandem nearly propelled their team to the state championship, but came up short with a loss in the semi-finals. It was a similar story with football. Both were star tight-ends and were recruited by division 1AA colleges, although only Jeremy decided to pursue football at the collegiate level.

The Sutton brothers took after their father physically. Many still think to this day that the two are twins. They both stand tall and broad, with athletic builds, thick dark hair, hazel eyes, and facial features to rival any of Hollywood’s leading actors. Their mother was on the short-side, even for a woman, and passed her physical traits on to their younger sister, Julie.

Sutton leaned his head sideways and gazed at Johnnie’s drawings. He still couldn’t quite make out superman amongst the scribbles of blue, green, and red crayons. But Johnny insisted they depicted the man of steel arresting the bad guy terrorists, just like his uncle Jake. Sutton beamed at the notion of Johnny thinking of him as a hero. He considered Johnny to be the closest to having his own child that he would ever come. His career was his baby, and at age thirty-six he was beginning to wonder if it might end up being his wife too. Sutton wheeled his chair to the waste basket, picked up the drawings, and with a gratified nod placed them in the box on his desk.

It seemed unusually quiet outside his office this morning, but it was early. His clerical assistant, Alma, an elderly, stern, humorless woman with cropped gray hair and deep facial wrinkles, arrived exactly fifteen minutes before her official starting time, as she had for the past thirty years. Now there is someone I won’t miss. Not at all, Sutton thought as the harridan peeked into his office.

“Would you like some coffee?” she grumbled from outside his office. She never offered to do anything unless she was already going to do it for herself.

“No. No thanks. My cup’s full,” Sutton answered with a deep sigh and somber tone.

“Are you okay?” Alma inquired convincingly enough to make Sutton recognize how despondent he must seem for her to be concerned.

“I’m fine!” Sutton exclaimed with forced assuredness. He wasn’t going to get involved in a heart-to-heart discussion with her on his last day.

For the first time since receiving his reassignment Sutton was feeling some regret. Leaving D.C. meant admitting failure, if to no one but himself, and that was something he hadn’t done much of in his life – and something he didn’t like. It was a mistake to have come to D.C. in the first place. He had always been intolerant of bureaucracy and politics, yet somehow he convinced himself he could rise above it and jolt his FBI career into overdrive without becoming one of the mind-numbed bureaucrats he despised. Maybe his mother was right after all. He was just like his father – good and bad. He was stubborn. Overconfident. Even egotistical. And now he could add one to his list that was never used to describe his father: quitter.

Sutton wasn’t finding much to put in his box. It was still early in the day and officially he was on the clock till five, but no one would know, or care if they did, if he knocked-off early. But he would stay the full day, even though it would force a hurried trip to the airport to catch his flight. When it came to his beloved FBI, Sutton always played it straight and narrow. Whether someone was looking, or cared, or not.

Sutton reached to the side of his desk and picked up his briefcase and placed it on his desk. He opened it and retrieved his plane ticket to check his departure time for the hundredth time. This was a flight he did not want to miss.

Flight 559—Departure: Ronald Reagan International Airport 8:00PM, it read. Arrival: 10:47PM, Lambert International Airport, St. Louis, Missouri.

He smiled. St. Louis, Missouri — the gateway to the west. Home of Cardinal’s baseball, Budweiser beer, and the Gateway Arch. And toasted ravioli. How long had it been since he had a good order of toasted ravioli? “Old St. Louie,” he whispered. Not exactly what he expected—but it would do—it would do just fine.