The Majestic 42

The Majestic 421

By Jared Head2

“We did blow up the skyscraper we called the threat in on….right?”3

“No,” I shuddered, “We blew up the one six blocks away that hadn’t been evacuated.”4

It was about 40 stories tall, and at 10:30am on a particularly boring Thursday morning, it’d be packed like Disneyland on Special Needs day. The bottom support column charges had gone off properly, wasting no time in taking down the huge circular apartment complex. Just in case, a variety of much higher-grade explosives and 3,500 foot per second detonation cord would have taken out prime locations to cause a “pancake collapse”. This would allow the floors to fall internally on to one another, stressing individual support beams and eventually causing a total structural failure. How they had managed to set-up the wrong building, I’ve no clue…set-up?5

“Well,” my partner sighed, “That’s gonna’ ruin a lot of mornings.”6

My name is Timothy Regal Vanderpelt Perry, and in six different languages my name’s rough translation means “Here comes the fuck-up who will ruin our civilization right now!” This time it just happens that the language is English. Problems and troubleshooting are my specialty. But this time I’ve botched up so badly, that my supervisor at this moment is on a phone line somewhere to change my association from NSA to some random terrorist organization that they deem me worthy of not belonging to.7

“Oh, would you look at that!” he huffed.8

“What?” my mouth ran dry.9

Charles was my partner assigned to me. Young and brash, he thought of his career as a spy like something out of James Bond. Problem was we didn’t have the nice cars or easy women. Oh, we had plenty of gadgets and enough money to use as toiletpaper if we ever needed to. They were probably assigning him to some terrorist group back at NSA too.10

“The evacuation area of the building we called the bomb threat in to, it happened to be right under the building we just accidentally destroyed. Rubble fell right on them,” he demonstrated by whistling, his two hands approaching and making a loud splat noise from his mouth as some spittle flew out. Disgusting as far as I’m concerned, and I mean the spittle and his bleak description.11

“Okay, Charles, you need to head down to the ATM in the lobby and get al the money out of the account that you can. Take the briefcase just in case, we’re going to need to get the hell out of here and on the double,” I thundered out as I threw the metal case to him. Leaving me all to myself, I looked out the window to the east, our room being on top of the hotel, seeing the smoke rise into the air and flow down the streets like a fluid. I looked back at the TV, picking up the remote and putting it onto the NEWSMIX channel. All four major networks in the mix were covering what we had just pulled off in the name of this country we were trying to defend.12

“Television really does rule the nation,” I quietly joked to myself. I opened up the window and dropped the cell phone we had been given, and watched gravity pull it down 30 or so floors, smashing to pieces on the sidewalk and narrowly missing a few folks. If the NSA hadn’t started tracking that cell signal by now, they never would. If they were, I now gave them a reason to scratch their heads. As I reflected on the operation up until the point of detonation in the wrong building, my mind began to scream set-up. Everything smelled correct for my conclusion, and I began to worry. My tactics and work ethic weren’t exactly appreciated by the head-honchos of my division. No, I’m not experiencing worry; it’s paranoia that’s taking overtook over for this fleeting moment of time. It’s got me contemplating getting my handgun out and killing Charley as soon as he walked in the door. Thing was if he really was working against me, he’d have already done what I was planning to do to him right after the detonation of the charges had occurred. I’ve really got to shake this paranoia. Once you start doubting yourself and others around you, it may be time to call it quits. I walked back to the window to try and get some fresh air.13

The door opened and in a moment of panic I whipped around and grabbed the gun from off my bed. Charles dropped the briefcase and it startled me so much, I fire off a shot. Money spilt everywhere and it tore open, and I let the magazine fall out of the gun.14

“Did I hit you?”15

“No,” he squeaked.16

“Good, did you get all of the money?”17

“Well, the ATM ran out of money at about $5,446,780---” as he continued on, I turned to look at the TV, guilt starting to run through me. Although we were supposed to kill people, I never thought it’d ever hit home. Keeping deaths at a distance was something I was always good at doing, but now it happened right in front of me. It happened because of a mistake.18

“---I mean, if I had known that those little mobile ATM’s had that much cash on hand in them, hell, you think I’d be here? Hell no! You’d probably be coming after me to arrest me or something, but…like…I’d be a mastermind of all this stuff…you know, escape from any situation you throw me into.”19

“Charles?”20

“You alright Perry?” he preferred to call me by my last name for whatever reason, “You’re acting like something big happened.”21

“Yeah, we just killed who-knows how many people when we should have only a handful dead…if any.”22

“We all make mistakes you know,” his voice giving a comforting tone.23

“Yeah, but this is something serious. Charles, I’m realizing we were set-up. This was suppose to be a one way trip for us.”24

“What makes you say that?”25

“We missed our checkpoint,” I realized. I looked at my watch, it’s hands pointing to make out 10:45am, “We were suppose to be at the end of E. Seaside Way at 10:29am precisely and wait for our pick-up.”26

“And?”27

“That building we just destroyed accidentally…it’s at the end of E. Seaside Way.”28

“Okay,” Charles tried to calm me, “Let’s not jump to conclusions---”29

“---If I was jumping to conclusions then I’d be assuming everything went according to our plans, which it hasn’t. If there’s one thing you need to learn Charles, it’s that anomalies such as these should never happen in the first place. The pieces of the puzzle are falling together way too accurately to be considered a fluke. You understand what I’m saying?”30

“Are you saying we should implement an Unthinkable 42?”31

“No!” I corrected harshly, “It’s considered a Majestic 42: when a spy feels threatened by his own organization he should refrain from acting in a manner that could escalate to warfare that can be perceived publicly and will harm civilians on a massive scale.”32

“So we should prepare for attrition warfare?”33

“Grind them like a stone,” I couldn’t help but smile, knowing he caught my drift and agreed.34

“You know, a lot of people were staring at me when I was down in the lobby. In fact, they’ve got guys down in the lobby with big rifles. I mean, they shot at me and then headed for the stairwell I assume.”35

“What the hell?!? Why didn’t you tell me this 10 minutes ago when you first got up here?”36

“Didn’t cross my mind,” he muttered. I figured the NSA had picked up on my cell signal before I had dropped my phone out the window. They were playing the game smarter than I was.37

“Didn’t cross your mind,” I sarcastically retorted, “This has got to be completely set-up.”38

I dropped down to under the bed and pulled out a trunk. Opening it was easy and so were putting the components together.39

“So what should we do?”40

I began assembling what we in the NSA called “The Monster”. A massive 30mm gatling gun that was usually shoved in the nose of an A-10 CAS fighter. Made of advanced super-lightweight carbon fiber, it weighed only 50 pounds and had a shortened barrel to fit into close quarters like our spacious hotel room. It shot projectiles that had a core of depleted uranium. Its intended use was to take out tanks, so I can’t imagine what we’ll find left of the special raid they are about to conduct. I pulled out a line of the belt-fed ammunition and locked it in.41

“We make a lot of noise,” I said backing up to the wall so I had a clear shot at the door and the windows, “We make a lot of noise when they walk through that door.”42

The knock on the door startled me so much that I pulled the trigger, and off the door and wall behind it flew.43

“Aw shit!” I frustratedly gasped, “I sure as hell hope no one was behind it.”44

Quickly to my feet I went and checked to see if anyone had been behind the door.45

“Isn’t he the manager of this place?”46

“Yeah,” my ears were going to be ringing from the concussive blast of the gun for a long long while, “He is.”47

“Man, looks like we ruined his morning too.”48

From about chest up, he lay on the left side of the hallway. From about the waist down, he lay on the other side of the hallway. The rest of him was spattered across the walls.49

“Hey!” Charles’s face lit up, “so does this mean our stay is on the house?”50

I really hope the manager had been killed instantly. I slapped Charles on the back of his head.51

“Goddamn opportunist,” I walked back into the room and prepared to put The Monster to sleep.52

“Shameless,” Charles pointed his finger at me, “I’m a shameless opportunist…and don’t you ever forget it!”53