I planned to attack my opponent’s weakest link. The organization would then begin to topple, leaving me with the luxury of seeing where the pieces fell.

The program’s weak link pulled into his driveway. Hidden in the wooded area behind his home, I checked my watch. 1745. His arrival, for the following five work nights, was within ten minutes of the same time. He remained home, watching television, until 2200, at which time he went to bed, upstairs.

The two-story home was forty minutes south of Quantico. Many of the homes in the remote neighborhood were seasonal, with people occupying them in the summer months during vacation.

With only half the neighborhood unoccupied late in the fall, and the next closest home being several hundred feet away, causing alarm to his neighbors would require extraordinary measures.

My rental car was parked two miles away, at a restaurant. I was dressed in black cargo pants and a matching jacket. Carrying a sturdy canvas bag and a collapsible fishing pole in an area known for fishing allowed me to amble along the shoreline behind the homes without raisings a single eyebrow.

Just after dusk, I snuck through the back yard. Pressed against the side of his home, I removed my jacket and stuffed it into the overnight-sized bag I carried. My white long-sleeved tee shirt was fitted with a logo I downloaded from the internet—the easily recognized multicolor triangle from the Virginia Natural Gas Company. Beneath the logo, a fictitious name and title, Tracy Jameson, Field Technician, provided whoever I encountered a false sense of peace of mind.

Printing it on iron-on transfer paper was easy. Ironing it onto my shirt transformed the simple article of clothing into a believable Virginia Natural Gas employee’s uniform. My hat, fitted with the same logo, topped off my ensemble.

Contrary to the belief of many, the easiest way to gain access into a target’s home was to have them let you in.

I pulled the electronic leak detector from my bag, tugged my cap low on my brow, and walked toward the front door with the device in one hand and my bag in the other.

I rang the doorbell.

My eyes were fixed on the door’s threshold, so he wouldn’t recognize my face. The door opened. His stockinged feet and lower legs were all that was in my line of sight.

“Good evening,” Wallace said. “Is there a problem?”

“As a matter of fact…” I looked up. “There is.”

I struck him with my gloved right fist in the center of his celiac plexus, a complex network of nerves located in the upper abdomen. The hard strike caused his diaphragm to spasm, making breathing nearly impossible for the thirty seconds that followed the blow.

With surprise-filled eyes and an open mouth, he looked back at me. While he heaved to catch his breath, I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

Doubled over in undeniable pain, he pressed his hands to his knees and fought to breathe.

I lowered my bag to the floor and removed a plastic tie and my weapon, a silenced HK MP7 machine pistol. I flipped off the switch to the entry hall light with the heel of my palm and then tapped the barrel of the weapon against his forehead.

He lifted his head.

“If you do not comply with my requests, you will be shot once in the head,” I warned. “If you scream or attempt to run, you will be shot in each of your legs, and both arms. I will then use every ounce of my training and experience to torture you into compliance. The instructions I’m going to give you are not negotiable.”

I gestured toward the staircase with the barrel of the pistol. “Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

Without argument, he complied.

I hung the pistol from my shoulder by its strap and secured his wrists together with a zip tie. Then, I removed an eight-inch strip of duct tape from the roll in my bag.

“Face me,” I said.

Still trying to catch his breath, he turned around. His face conveyed the same fear many of my targets had in the past. His eyes expressed the uncertainty of what he felt his future held.

I placed the tape over his mouth. “Walk upstairs, to the master closet. I’ll follow you.”

With my bag’s strap draped over one shoulder and the machine pistol hanging from the other, I followed him upstairs, into the master bedroom.

Once there, I gestured toward the closet door. “Go to the back of the closet, sit down, and make yourself comfortable.”

Closets rarely have windows and are typically filled with clothes, making them the best location in a home to torture someone. The clothes, sheetrock, and wall insulation act as sound deadening, muffling voices to a nearly indiscernible sound. Given the distance to his closest neighbor, no one would hear a thing, regardless of how in depth the interview became.

The closet was a large his and hers walk-in, with a mirror on one end and storage space on either side. Clothes were scattered loosely about the floor, hung haphazardly on both sides of the closet, and in various organized piles. In seeing everything in such disarray, I found it hard to believe he was an expert in computer hacking, gathering intel, or anything else that required organizational skills.

Still wearing his no-iron slacks and crumpled dress shirt from his day at work, he sat in front of the mirror, facing me.

Standing at the closet entrance, I let out an exaggerated sigh. “I’m going to ask you a few questions. Your response can be as brief or as detailed as you see fit. Remember, if you attempt to scream for help, you will be shot in each of your limbs. Then, I will cut out your tongue and we’ll conduct the interview with a pen and piece of paper. Understood?”

He nodded.

“Sergeant Shephard was murdered after being removed from the program,” I said, not giving him a chance to claim otherwise. “Who drafted the order to have him killed?”

He stared.

I knew he had the answer. I needed to know what else he could tell me that I didn’t already know.

“Are you prepared to give a response?” I asked.

He nodded.

I approached him and removed the tape from his mouth.

He drew a deep breath, gazed at one of the piles of clothes for a moment, and then looked up.

“The order came from the DNI’s office,” he said. “Believe me, I didn’t like it. I was just following orders.”

The Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, was a post-9/11 position created within the executive branch of the federal government. The Office of the DNI housed the DNI, and the staff that supported him. They answered only to the President. The Director of National Intelligence oversaw the CIA, NSA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, DEA, ATF, and each of the military intelligence agencies.

“Did the DNI give the order to have him shipped out?”

“No. It came from somewhere in the Marine Corps.”

“So, the Marines ordered him to be shipped out, and the DNI ordered that he be eliminated prior to him shipping out?”

“Correct.”

If the Marines ordered Shephard to be shipped out, and the Office of the DNI gave an order to have him killed, my worst fear was correct. The DNI acted on its own, independent of the military. They killed Shephard to prevent him from talking.

“Who in the DNI office gave the order?” I asked.

“Nobody knows,” he responded.

I sharpened my glare. “What do you mean, nobody knows?”

“Everything’s encrypted,” he said. “We get the orders, and we act on them. No one has ever met the man in charge, and no one’s spoken to him directly. The Director of National Intelligence is the only one who knows who he is.”

“Bullshit!” I spat, waving the weapon in his direction. “Tell me what you know. Everything.”

He lowered his head, thought for a moment, and then gazed into the path of my stare. “After receiving the order to eliminate Shephard, I started looking into who the guy is. I doubted he was military, because he was giving an order to kill a marine. Just last week I got his computer’s IP address, but it doesn’t tell me much. His server is in the Washington, D.C. area, that’s all I really know. I’ll need a few weeks to pinpoint his location. Then, I’ll know where and who he is.”

“You’ve just recently started trying to figure out who this guy is?” I argued. “Over the course of three years, you’ve never wondered?”

“The order to eliminate Shephard seemed out-of-character,” he said. “So, I started digging. Believe me, when it came time to assign that mission, I was just following orders. Processing paperwork. I didn’t like it.”

“What about Martin? What were his thoughts about Shephard being eliminated?”

His expression went blank.

“He doesn’t know?” I asked.

“The orders come to me. I assemble the intel sheets, and Martin signs off on them. The directive of that mission was clear. Martin was to have no knowledge of the order to eliminate Shephard. After the mission was complete, we received word from the DNI that Shephard was KIA in Somalia.”

“And you didn’t tell Martin the truth?”

He shook his head. “I did not.”

I pointed the tip of the barrel at his stomach. “Are you sure?”

“I swear it,” he stammered. “The orders come directly to me. Martin never sees them until after I sign them. The mission was marked for my eyes only.”

Beads of sweat poured from his brow and ran down along his face. My interrogation experience told me he was telling the truth, but I needed to know everything he knew, and nothing less.

“You have no idea who gave the order? He sends emails. You comply. It’s that easy?”

He nodded eagerly. “We receive an encrypted email giving the target’s name, personal data, and a recent photo. We may or may not receive data supporting the reason for elimination. Beyond that, we assemble the intel in-house. Since the inception of New Dawn, we’ve received instructions from one man in the DNI’s office. The emails have all been signed, ‘R.P. McMurphy’, but there’s no such person in the Office of the DNI that I can find.”

I laughed to myself. It was blatantly obvious that beyond assigning the order to kill Shephard, Wallace didn’t know a damned thing. With my suspicions confirmed, I was ready to begin phase two of my plan.

“Who was assigned to eliminate Shephard?” I asked.

“The order said there was to be no paperwork, no intel sheet, and that the operator utilized was not to be revealed to anyone in New Dawn, not even—”

I pointed the barrel of my pistol at his thigh.

“Who was it assigned to?” I demanded.

He swallowed heavily enough that I heard it. “Pike.”