Swap Out!

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

At the same moment, twenty blocks south of Maggie’s studio, First Lieutenant Bobby Stenman wasn’t minding his current assignment as much as he’d expected. From the second to last row he watched television chef “Julio Julio, the Spanish Wonder.” He had to be the most irritating man alive.

Which wouldn’t be much longer.

“Welcome back to Chef Julio Julio, that’sa me, the Best of Spanish Food coming to you live from Rockefeller Center. Let’sa see what we’ve done.” He opened the second oven, pretending he hadn’t just shoved the raw one into the first oven two minutes ago, right before the commercial break. He tipped his finished seafood paella for the cameras to see. Camera Two slid in for the close-up while Camera One set up for the audience-reaction shot. The audience lighting only reached the first few rows making the crowd appear larger than it was. Stenman was careful to remain safely lost in the shadows.

He’d researched this operation like any other. And there was nothing authentic about the chef, Mr. Dave Roberts of the Bronx. Not his upbringing, not his tan, not his pretended heritage. Bobby had failed to uncover the fatal flaw, the one that made Julio a target of his superiors, but that information wasn’t his job.

The chef was babbling about the Iberico Chorizo sausage and the sweet clams. “Can’t you just imagine the bee-you-tiful smells there at home? Our studio audience certainly doesn’t have to!” He fluttered his eyebrows in a fashion that was meant to be wise or meaningful, but reminded Stenman of a bad Austin Powers imitation.

It was almost worth killing him just to silence that trademark fake accent, cultivated to cover his itinerant, dead-beat father’s Brooklyn grind.

Julio made wafting motions over the dish with his free hand. The Audience Cam panned the front couple rows while they did their best to look excited. Pretty good imitation, maybe they really were.

At the far left end of the second-to-last row, Stenman prepared to hide his face with a cough, but the camera’s eye didn’t come near his section. Didn’t test his disguise of a pale blue button-down shirt and loosened tie that made him appear but a bored, young business exec with nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than sit in a television studio audience and applaud on cue.

No savory paella aromas reached him. Back here all he could smell was the sour sweat of the woman to his right and the hot metal stench that reminded him more of an overheated weapon than the studio lights hanging only a few feet overhead.

Chef Julio Julio flashed his signature smile at the camera. Perfect teeth and deep Latino tan not inherited from his fair-skinned Puerto Rican mother. He maintained the look with heavy bouts of UV tanning.

Stenman had suggested a UV overdose, but Command had rejected it. It wasn’t high enough profile for this scenario, whatever that meant. Stenman was paid to plan and conduct the operation, not to question it. Asking why it was a matter of national security to kill a television chef had gone unanswered. Not that he’d expected one.

His orders were very clear. Do the op and then sit quietly in the audience to make sure it all went as planned. Witness only. No action. No questions.

A few prep smells finally reached his row. The bright tang of sautéed onions. The browning of the sausage made him near enough insane after living on moldy rice for the last ninety days in the Thai jungle while chasing opium lords. He’d have to delay his return from this op at least long enough to get a couple of Quarter Pounders at McD’s.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to taste the paella.

Chef Julio Julio waved invitingly to a woman in the front row. It took a second wave for the leggy, bottle-blonde to break her inertia at being picked out of the crowd. She offered a coy giggle as she moved to the counter with a nice sashay of hips. Good choice, aisle on one side, a woman of similar age and equally skimpy yet expensive attire on the other. She wasn’t there with a husband or doting parent. Girlfriends out on the town, maybe a little bored if the chef was lucky. Maybe they both were looking for a little post-show party if his luck was running high.

It wouldn’t be.

Stenman shook off the assessment and leaned forward in his chair. Chef Julio Julio had never done this before, never shared his food with a guest. Background had showed that his wife and his mistress had both dumped him in the last two weeks, but the celebrity chef had kept on cooking as if nothing had changed. The op had been given the last-minute go-ahead.

There wasn’t a contingency plan for this change because Chef Julio Julio had simply never shared his cooking with anyone. He even threw out the leftovers rather than giving them to the crew as most other chefs did, another quirk Stenman had been unable to trace. Made for a lot of hard feelings on the set, but profile perfect for this op.

Chef Julio Julio leaned in very close. Flirting heavily, sending a titter of laughter through the older ladies in the studio audience including the underwashed behemoth whose hip was forcing him half into the aisle. After a lengthy whispered inquiry, the chef introduced, “Bee-you-tiful Jennifer from Ohio” to the camera. It was easy enough to guess what else had passed in that precious airtime by the blonde’s coy smile. She was indeed bee-you-tiful, even if Stenman wanted to throttle Chef Julio Julio for his overuse of the word.

Stenman’s seat embodied a padded luxury compared to squatting in the Thai jungle. Dry, too. But the jungle sounded very attractive. Now. Right now.

He should stop the show, break the charade. But all his training rooted him to the spot. Silence had been ingrained for years. It kept him from acting rashly in far more hazardous conditions than a New York television studio. He considered the options rapidly, but there weren’t any. The top-ranked mandate of this op was invisibility. Not low profile, but zero profile. Making a major fuss on a live, national TV feed about poisoned paella definitely wasn’t zero.

Both cameras swung forward. One on their faces, the other operator finding a nice profile shot of the unexpected guest from bust to top-of-head. Stenman was no producer, but shouldn’t one of the cameras be showing the food on a cooking show?

Leggy Jennifer and Chef Julio Julio dipped their forks together into the paella. All he could do was curse the chef’s overactive testosterone and watch. In a gesture that would have been charming in any other situation, they fed each other their forkfuls.

Their “yummy” sounds were the last they were ever going to make. They both grabbed their throats, again in unison. The audience laughed. Someone even chanted, “Too hot! Too hot!” More laughter.

The close-up camera picked out the heckler, second row, three in from the center aisle. Young woman, maybe early twenties, half-dozen years younger than Stenman, worn leather jacket over a tight t-shirt with a torn out collar. Blond and blue hair. Worked on her, kind of cute. They gave her a few extra seconds of airtime, good to have a wide spread on your audience demographic. He checked the overhead TV monitor repeating the camera’s views for those seated in the back rows. Seriously cute, several steps better than perfectly coiffed, blonde Jennifer’s studied presentation. Under different circumstances he might have chatted her up.

Focus, Stenman. The Op. Zero profile.

He shifted behind a corduroy cowboy hat some brunette wore too far back on her head as the camera swung. This is New York, lady. City Cowboy went out years ago.

When Chef and Blonde didn’t respond, the same heckler called out, “Breathe! Breathe!” Throaty voice, kinda sexy. The camera jerked back, catching a nice bit of cleavage and a wicked smile. Cute and funny. Killer combo.

Stenman grimaced at his word choice. Breathing was one thing they couldn’t do.

The floor director edged forward at first, finally, against all of her training, rushing in front of the camera as their throats closed permanently. The shellfish-based neurotoxin would be easily discounted as severe allergic reactions. Any medical tests would discover the nature of the toxin. Another member of his team would take care of the food scraps before they tested for the exceptional quantity of it. Not his part of the op. But he’d planted the toxin. This was his part. He forced himself to watch.

Their skin paled. Chef Julio Julio turned a white that belied his pretended Spanish heritage and Jennifer from Ohio, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, was turning a rather ugly blue as true asphyxia took hold. Suddenly he wasn’t so interested in his Quarter Pounders.

When they collapsed to the studio floor, Stenman rose quietly from his seat, eased down the emergency stairs at the back of the seating, and moved out the studio door before the screams began.

No one would remember his face. Probably not even that there’d been a man in business casual seated in the back.

He was invisible.

He was US Special Operations Forces, a professional ghost for his country.

He hadn’t even been there.