Dick Winchester in… The Pentagon Part 1

Hello! If you're new to the Dick Winchester series, I highly recommend starting with Chapter 1 of Book 1: The Box with No Name

This is Chapter 4 of Book 2. If you haven't already, I recommend starting at Chapter 1 for the sake of continuity:

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Book 2, Chapter 4

I approached the full-body scanner, glancing at the black-clad Pentagon Force Protection Agency officer and clearing my throat.

“Do I need to… secure my weapon or something?”

The evening of surprises continued as the officer made eye contact and asked, “That Smith & Wesson .38 in your front left pocket?”

“Yeah,” I replied, wondering if my concealed revolver was that obvious or her eyes were that good.

“Nah, you were scanned the second you came in view of the building. If the central threat AI deemed you a risk, you would’ve been vaporized before you got within ten feet of the door.” She smiled. “We’re just here to put a human face to it.”

“So anyone can bring weapons in here?”

The officer shrugged. “To a certain extent. If you packed something heavier than that peashooter, then we might start having issues.”

I smiled back. “So, say, a Predator drone?”

Her face turned to stone in an instant. “We don’t joke about aircraft attacking this facility, sir.”

Oops. Guess they’re still a bit touchy after the last time.

Trying not to wilt under her glower, I stepped into the scanner and raised my arms. A moment later, I was waved through. MP5 still resting on her shoulder harness in full view of every officer and camera, Officer Teresa Knowles repeated my maneuver, and a moment later she stood beside me without a single question asked or eyebrow raised.

On the other side, Agent 1 and Agent 2 rejoined us.

“Boy,” I remarked to the charcoal-suited couriers. “Coming here under the boss’s seal really greases the wheels.”

Agent 1 nodded, his placid face unchanged. “She’s a big fan.”

In a night—a week, really—full of twists and turns, that one still took me a moment to work through my skull. Teresa seemed to sense the question I had yet to ask and grinned at me. “You don’t exactly keep a low profile, Winchester.”

Agent 2 chuckled. “The boys in the office are all taking bets on when we’ll see the first war in Arlington County.”

Teresa’s grin morphed to a scowl so quickly it took my brain a moment to catch up. “And it doesn’t bother you that that ‘war’ might spillover into your own walls?”

It was Agent 1’s turn to laugh. “I guess only one of you heard the spiel about the central threat AI they have guarding this place. If it picks up any threats to the building within a quarter mile radius, they’ll be incinerated in a heartbeat. You’re just annoyed at the thought of all the paperwork this street war’s going to ensue.”

Teresa huffed. “You would be too if you had to interview every witness to every shooting.”

My mind flashed back to the first open conflict of this supposed war everyone appeared to be waiting for, when Amazon had erroneously delivered a mailbomb intended for another address on my block. Given the near constant bricks and rocks sailing through my windows from GrubHub’s finest, I had made the only logical conclusion possible: that the smoking hole in my front yard was an escalation.

I responded in kind with an escalation of my own, calling in a tip to an old contact of mine at DoorDash reporting that GrubHub had violated their agreement and delivered in DoorDash territory. Unaware of their infraction—because they hadn’t done any such thing—the GrubHub local union chapter was less than prepared when a stream of sedans with red stickers pulled up in front of their known gathering places, rolled down their windows, and opened fire.

It was, suffice it to say, a bloodbath and the reason no one spoke the name GrubHub in the county limits anymore. With a prickle of alarm, I realized that Teresa must not know that I was the instigator of that street battle or she would have nothing to do with me. If not for the loss of life, then for the mountain of paperwork I had laid at her door.

Hopefully that never came to light. I was certainly taking “Wiped GrubHub’s Arlington chapter off the map without firing a single shot” off my list of achievements with which to impress and amaze my new partner. Thankfully that list was plenty full already.

I always wondered what became of the survivors. Not every GrubHub driver would have been on shift. Others would have been out delivering when it all went down. How many didn’t get the message in time and wandered into the aftermath—or an ambush? How many went to ground? How many more turned traitor in the hopes it meant DoorDash would spare them or fled into the arms of Uber Eats for sanctuary?

It was a romantic notion, but I imagined a few groups of loyal holdouts, waiting for the day GrubHub returned to Arlington’s streets to rejoin the cause and take their revenge.

They might be useful recruits for Winchester Delivery Services, experienced delivery drivers burning for retribution against the organization that had slaughtered their friends and coworkers without provocation—from their perspective, anyway.

Assuming, once again, that the provocation and its source never came to light. Or else I doubted they’d be all that pleased with their new boss.

But that remained hypothetical for the time being, and I jogged myself back to reality as the G men led us through a pair of double doors. Instead of some imposing office with oak-paneled walls and a mahogany desk flanked by the seals of each of the armed services, I felt the cool air of evening on my face.

The courtyard, I realized, taking a moment to look around. I guess that works just as well.

But something didn’t feel quite right about the scene before me. Instead of well-manicured hedges and marble fountains babbling in the background, most of the greenery was bare or just north of dead, and any benches or other decorations appeared to have survived a tornado.

Not a tornado, I concluded, scanning the pockmarked inner walls and shattered windows as images of gray apartment blocks savaged by bullets and shrapnel in the streets of Mariupol clawing their way to the surface. A warzone.

“What gives?” I asked Agent 1. “I thought your AI kept out all threats.”

Teresa, who had wandered a few steps ahead, turned to hear the answer with a concerned look of her own. Likely wondering how this tsunami of paperwork hasn’t ended up on her desk.

Rather than answering, Agent 1 stooped to retrieve something from an outdoor chest that, in another life, would have been sold to a family that needed somewhere to put their pool toys. But instead of a neon-colored noodle, the man shoved a vest at me. The bulk took me by surprise as I stumbled to correct for the added weight, which meant only one thing.

Kevlar.

“You guys really take your security seriously around here,” I observed, glancing at the wall tops. “You really think some sniper is going to get up there and take a shot at us?”

The collective scowl Agents 1 and 2 gave me was a near carbon copy to the one the PFPA officer had, forcing me to scan my archive of area history. Finally, it hit me.

Still a bit touchy after the D.C. Sniper business, apparently. Sensitive bunch for people charged with running the institutionalized killing machine that is the U.S. Military.

Before I could say anything else, Agent 2 turned from his own outdoor pool storage bin. This time the thing shoved into my chest was a bit more lethal in nature than the vest I had just finished strapping to my torso.

A SCAR-H assault rifle. My eyes just about bugged out of my skull.

Before I could even ask about ammo load, Agent 2 shoved five box magazines into my hands. Thankfully I had slung the SCAR-H around my shoulders on instinct, or 7.62 NATO rounds would have spilled across the courtyard walkway. I struggled to keep hold of them all until I noticed the perfectly sized slots on the front of my vest. Four box magazines neatly stowed and waiting their turn.

Still, I paused before I inserted the fifth magazine into the rifle, glancing at the G men. As I had been fumbling with my gear, they had already kitted themselves out. Now, in vivid answer to my unspoken question, they charged their M4A1s in unison. Locked and loaded inside the Pentagon.

What a beautiful world we live in, I reflected as I seated my own magazine and pulled the charging handle, checking that the safety was still engaged and keeping my finger resting against the trigger guard.

Teresa stepped next to me, her MP5 now at the ready but looking dreadfully small compared to the battle rifles the three of us now carried. Apparently satisfied with the visitors’ trigger discipline, Agents 1 and 2 nodded and motioned for us to follow. So we followed, kitted out in Kevlar with loaded automatic weapons in the literal middle of the Pentagon.

To call it surreal would be so gross of an understatement I would have found myself in The Hague on war crime charges.

As I marched past barren flower beds and eviscerated sculptures, I reflected that going to meet the Secretary of Defense while locked and loaded wasn’t as ridiculous a scene as I first thought. After all, if I turned Bad Guy with a Gun, she had Agent 1 and Agent 2 to assume the role of Good Guys with Guns.

Of course, her confidence could also be bolstered by the fact that she herself would turn Good Guy with a Gun as we rounded a mangled hedgerow to find her standing in the courtyard center, her own assault rifle held low and ready.

Teresa and I came to a stop in unison, appraising the woman before us. One of the most powerful individuals on the planet. Responsible for the most powerful military force, including the largest budget.

But for all that—not to mention the guns surrounding her—she seemed fairly laid back.

“So,” she said, flicking her hair behind her neck, “you’re Barry’s other boss.”

“Correct. Dick Winchester, pleasure to meet you.”

Instead of taking my offered hand, she raised her assault rifle. “There will be time for pleasantries later. The main event is about to kick off.”

“Main event…” As my voice trailed off, Teresa glanced at me. I shook my head to indicate I was just as much in the dark as she was. “You mean our meeting?”

The Secretary of Defense laughed. “Not quite, though I certainly am looking forward to chatting should we make it through this in one piece.”

Seeing the confusion plastered on our faces, she fixed Agents 1 and 2 in a gaze that would have wilted the plants around us—if they weren’t already dying, that is. “Didn’t you brief them on the reason for their visit?”

Agent 1’s face remained placid despite her ire. “Not enough time, ma’am. He insisted on chatting with the security staff.”

“I said one thing to her!”

Ignoring my protest, Agent 1 continued, “Besides, it was Barry who extended the invite.”

She nodded, motioning to someone who appeared to be recording meeting minutes while also bedecked in a bulletproof vest. “Block off five minutes for me to yell at Mr. Nelson later.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

The Secretary of Defense took a deep breath and exhaled, her shoulders visibly loosening. “Okay, my apologies for failing to properly read you in. You were invited by me to the Pentagon to serve as extra players in a little annual contest we hold here.”

In the back of my brain, the synapses were firing. I looked from my SCAR-H to the bullet holes adorning the inner walls of the most important five-sided shape in the world.

Following my gaze, the Secretary nodded. “Indeed. Think of it like a super intense paintball match.”

“A paintball match with live rounds?”

She seemed to enjoy my shock as she raised her battle rifle to rest on her shoulder. “You know how I got this job, Mr. Winchester?”

I had to call up my high school civics knowledge for a moment. “You’re appointed by the President.”

“Yes, that is the unclassified version of events. The longer story is by shooting the old Secretary of Defense. The whole ‘presidential appointment’ bit is more of a posthumous PR job for the press and the American public. Very few secretaries actually live long enough to retire.” She lowered her assault rifle to her waist, patting it with her non-trigger hand. “I intend to be the first woman to do so.”

I looked at her with newfound respect, while Teresa stiffened beside me.

“Of course, this all goes unreported and unseen because, as a classified facility, local law enforcement has no jurisdiction on these grounds. Leaving us Feds to sort out our own affairs with this gentlemanly contest of wits—and bullets.”

Teresa let out a sigh of relief. Less paperwork.

Then she cocked her head. “You said annual? Why only once a year? And, no offense, but what makes your position worth killing—and possibly dying—for?”

“Well, Lieutenant,” the Secretary nodded to Teresa’s police uniform, and there was no mistaking the pleased expression on my partner’s face, “quite simply, because I get a cut of all money that changes hands under the omnibus that is the Department of Defense. We send tanks to Ukraine, I get a commission, even when no actual money changes hands. When our Afghan allies pay us to train their forces, some of that money flows directly into my accounts—in USD, of course.”

The head of the DoD cocked her head and paused for a moment. “You keep up with the news at all? How’s it going over there? I haven’t seen a new deposit in a while.”

Teresa and I looked at each other with wide eyes, both deciding in that moment we weren’t going to be the ones to break that particular bit of news. You’d think she gets briefings on that stuff, but I suppose she sees it more like a passive income stream. Set it and forget it.

Teresa broke eye contact as she spoke. “Uh, it’s pretty quiet over there these days.”

If any of the former Afghan National Army is still alive, anyway.

“Huh, good for them. Guess we stabilized that country after all.” With a shrug of her shoulders, the Secretary of Defense leaped back to the topic at hand. “As to the first question, because we all answer to the President, and way back when the DoD was first established, the man in charge of us all decided there needed to be rules. Couldn’t have the CIA, ATF, and DoD shooting at each other constantly or nothing would get done. We need to maintain the confidence of the public—” she winked at us “—and that means keeping our internal affairs just that: internal.”

She motioned to the walls ringing the inner courtyard to emphasize the fact that we were out of sight. “So CIA, ATF, FBI, and any other agencies who want to put forward teams compete in a tournament style bracket. Whoever is still standing at the end gets to then take a shot at the ruling champion.”

“So who’s the competition this year?” I asked.

I swore there was a gleam in the Secretary’s eye as she replied, “CIA. Tough competition. Always a first seed in the bracket. They’ve won the whole thing three times, in fact.”

“When was the last time they won?”

“Two years ago, when my team took the grand prize.” She smiled at us with clear pride.

Oh, boy. That sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach must be all my excitement.

I cocked my head. “So if you’re the reigning champion, then what do you need us for? Not that we’re not flattered and all.”

“The rule is we can only recruit from our office staff, unless civilians are read in and volunteer.” The Secretary nodded to her two visitors. “No active service members or law enforcement, but since law, intelligence, and defense agencies tend to have a lot of field agents and troops who get promoted to desks… well, let’s just say we won’t see anyone from the Department of Energy taking the throne anytime soon.”

“Ah, so we’re ringers.”

Everyone: Agents 1 and 2, the two shooters on the other side of the Secretary, even Sec Def herself, laughed at that.

“More like the practice squad,” Agent 2 said, filling us in on the joke.

“You,” Agent 1 tapped my shoulder, “are the designated ammo runner. Keep the M240 up there supplied and happy.”

I followed his finger to a mound of mulch near the eastern inner wall, obviously awaiting the landscapers who would distribute it to the flower beds and gardens, though that seemed a bit pointless considering the ground was likely poisoned with lead after so many yearly power struggles. Even so, additional bags of mulch had been stacked atop the hill to create a classic machine gun nest and protect the gunner from counterfire.

Like something kids would do when playing Army man. Except this time the guns don’t fire caps.

More echoes of Mariupol rumbled through my mind as my shoulders slumped. “Come on, you can use me. I fought in Ukraine, for Christ’s sake!”

At that, the Secretary of Defense waved her hand. “We’re well aware of your prior history, Mr. Winchester. You were an ammo runner in Ukraine, so why re-task you now? Be all you can be, as the Army grunts like to say.” She nodded to Teresa. “Your friend on the other hand is a fully trained and qualified combatant.”

“But I came under fire. I shot Russians.”

It was no use. The Secretary shook her head, and Teresa didn’t bother to hide her triumphant smirk as she turned to me.

“Sounds like we’ll be trading,” she said, unslinging her MP5.

“What, why?” I cradled my battle rifle to my chest, trying to keep it out of reach.

Before I even knew what was happening, Teresa hooked her foot behind my leg and swept me to the ground. As I lay there in a daze, the SCAR-H was hoisted away by its new owner. A moment later, the MP5 landed on my stomach. It might have hurt if not for the Kevlar padding—and the fact it only weighed five pounds.

Damn peashooter.

Teresa offered me a hand up, but instead of holding my palm, she gripped my forearm. The air whooshed by my ears as I flew to my feet almost as fast as I had fallen.

“My, my,” the Secretary remarked as I begrudgingly draped the MP5 sling around my neck, “it appears your companion is also qualified in hand-to-hand combat. On top of boasting an impressive size-to-strength ratio.”

In a night that barely seemed within reality anymore, I saw something else I would have written off as impossible if not for it happening before my eyes: Teresa blushing.

“My best friend Bessie there is easier to shoot one-handed, plus it’s lighter so you can run with it for longer distances without fatiguing. More fitting for a role behind the front lines.”

Perhaps she had meant the words to be mocking—it wouldn’t be the first time. Instead, it sounded more like she was seeking to change the subject. No matter the intent, I couldn’t argue with the logic behind the statement, even if there was now a SCAR-H-sized hole in my heart.

Besides, the time to argue dissipated as a dozen figures entered from the north end of the courtyard, ski masks covering their faces. All save the point man.

“Well, Janessa,” the middle-aged bureaucrat in tactical gear called out. “There’s still time to forfeit.”

“Keep dreaming, Bobby,” the Secretary of Defense shouted back.

The CIA director shrugged and motioned to his cadre. In seconds, they had vanished into the pockmarked terrain, their black gear blending with the lengthening shadows of twilight. “Thirty seconds and then it’s weapons hot. Only one of us walks out of here tonight!”

“Funny, I had planned on skipping, myself.”

Instead of replying, Bobby pulled a ski mask over his face and receded into the gloom.

Agent 1 tapped my shoulder, gesturing to four crates behind the battered fountain. “Ammunition dump. Keep the M240 fed and happy. As long as we control that high ground, they have to come to us. Beyond that, run magazines to anyone who calls for them.”

I nodded, knowing all too well how devastating it was to be caught on the wrong end of a machine gun.

Beside me, Agent 2 nodded to Teresa. “You’re with me on the right flank.”

Then I found myself standing alone beside the fountain as everyone else fanned out and sought the best defensive positions. Unaware of how much time remained before the ceasefire expired, I sprinted to the ammunition dump, hunkering behind the cracked lip of the fountain before the CIA employees all sighted in on the lone moron standing out in the open.

After a few tense breaths, the entire world exploded as automatic weapons opened up, the cacophony magnified by the inner walls of the Pentagon reflecting all noise back into the maelstrom.

I looked up as one of the windows behind Fort Mulch shattered, the bullets walking along the wall until they started throwing up clods of bark.

Imagine being one of the poor bastards who has an office looking into the courtyard, I thought in the moment before the M240 responded to the shots with a salvo of its own and all conscious thought became impossible in the grips of its roar.

Somewhere in the no-man’s land beyond our defensive line, a man screamed in agony. One office worker who won’t be reporting to work at Langley tomorrow.

The M240 continued laying down prodigious amounts of lead, and I realized I would soon be needed. I low crawled between the ammo crates until I found the one clearly labeled for the machine gun. I flipped the lid up, moving to a kneeling position so I could inspect the contents while remaining as small a target as possible.

Between the concussive blasts of each bullet and the familiar olive-green ammo boxes staring up at me, Mariupol was clawing at the corners of my consciousness. Demanding I return to the memories of those desperate days.

Not now. Focus.

Assuming the familiar position of one heavy-ass box in each hand, I inspected the quickest path between me and the gunner in Fort Mulch. It also happened to be completely exposed.

Yep, I concluded as I dashed along the crumbling walkway at the center of the Pentagon, back hunched and wincing at every bullet whipping the air around me, imagine how quickly things might fall apart if not for the steady hands at the helm of our nation’s government.

***

Tune in next week when the inter-agency rivarly concludes in the next thrilling installment of Dick Winchester—and Teresa Knowles—in… The Pentagon Part 2

Author’s Notes

I swear. I swear I’m not dragging this out on purpose. I’m just having too much fun with the premise. Can you imagine if they were actually holding “super intense paintball matches” (with live rounds, of course) in the Pentagon courtyard every year to determine who would be the Secretary of Defense? And meanwhile, I worked a joke about 9/11, the D.C. Sniper, and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan into one chapter? I’m cooking over here.

There shouldn’t be any major content gaps in this chapter, though I will clarify: the Ukraine references are quite real. Dick actually went and fought in the doomed defense of Mariupol—after responding to what he assumed was an ordinary job ad on LinkedIn. That chapter is actually on Vocal, but I soft launched it, so it wasn’t always linked in the signposts I like to add at the end of each installment. You can read it at your leisure:

More Dick Winchester in...

The Opening Salvo (Book 1)

• Opening chapter: The Box with No Name

The Counterattack (Book 2)

1. The Deflation
2. The Interrogation
3. The First Date
4. The Pentagon Part 1 — you are here
5. The Pentagon Part 2
6. The Movie Night — drafting in progress