by Jason Kasper
Offer of Revenge
The David Rivers Series, Book 2
Jason Kasper
Contents
The David Rivers Series
EXILE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
REDEMPTION
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
DESCENT
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
SALVATION
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
RETURN
Chapter 12
The David Rivers Series Continues…
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 by Jason Kasper
All rights reserved .
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review .
To James Sexton
Who survived the Quiet Hell with his head unbowed ,
and emerged an even better man than before .
Welcome back, brother .
The David Rivers Series
Book 1: Greatest Enemy
Book 2: Offer of Revenge
Book 3: Dark Redemption
Book 4: COMING SOON
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EXILE
Omnia iam fient fieri quae posse negabam
-Everything which I said could not happen will happen now
1
September 9, 2008
María Montez International Airport ,
Dominican Republic
Wood grain patterns collided and diverged into a greater labyrinth, an orderly chaos forming a tapestry upon which I could project any number of illusions. Embracing this welcome distraction from the monstrous heat, from the never-ending wait, from the rattling tension pulling on a brain too far removed from its last drink, I saw tidal waves crash and turn to sand dunes, clouds merge into a storm, Karma’s face appear and then vanish behind a veil of rain .
Her face had been an inescapable shadow trailing every thought since my arrival to the Dominican Republic one month ago .
Or had it been two ?
I didn’t know anymore. The sun’s progress across the sky before it yielded to damp, windswept periods of darkness had long since blurred into a kaleidoscope of depression and alcohol, of writing and contemplating the abyss my life had become since Karma’s death. The loss of Boss, Matz, and Ophie was equally painful, but nothing could have stopped them from embarking on their final mission. I was forever sentenced to an eternal shame for living while they didn’t, but free from the crowning sin of failing to save them .
I had no such reprieve from Karma .
I returned to my seat beside her in the truck often, without warning, my vision filled with the horrifying moment of her end just as vividly as if I were still seeing it in person. Only when I drank myself into a blackout shroud of numbness—a fleeting state that became increasingly harder to attain—did those ceaseless replays subside into an aching, muted dread .
I pinched the sweat-soaked bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger, then placed my entire hand over my eyes and squeezed against my pulsing temples until the pressure on my skull became unbearable .
If I had asked Karma to take our combined earnings and leave with me before that mission, she would still be alive. If I had told Ian to move our getaway truck fifty feet down the trail, she would still be alive. If I had conducted a security patrol while waiting for the ambush team instead of sitting in the truck with my rifle barrel resting on the floor —
“Lo cuarto don, ‘al favor . ”
The voice beside me sounded impatient, as if this were a repeated request .
It may well have been, given that my gunfight-torn hearing was infinitely worse in the presence of background noise .
The hectic airport lobby wasn’t helping—the vacuous space, from the tile floors waxed between the arrival of passenger jets to the low ceiling glaring with whatever fluorescent lights remained functional, echoed every footstep, rumble of luggage wheels, burst of laughter, and episodic chatter of the women behind the ticket counter .
Releasing the pressure on my temples, I felt the dull throb of my headache returning. September in the Dominican was the wrong time and place for a daylight return to sobriety. Unmitigated by a dive into the open water or escape to an air-conditioned room, the feverish heat turned the semi-open lobby into a sweatbox for the mind and body .
I lowered my hand from my face and returned my gaze to the wood grain surface of the table in front of me. “Veta a la mierda . ”
At this, I heard a flat clack and caught a glint of metal being waved in my peripheral vision .
I looked over to see a dark-skinned hand loosely holding a switchblade knife. Following the slender arm upward with my eyes, I saw the face of an adolescent boy looking at me expectantly. He may have been any one of the two dozen boys playing stickball in the trash-strewn fields I had driven by on my way to the airport .
He flicked his chin upward. “Lo cuarto mamaguevo, ahora . ”
Glancing behind him, I saw four younger boys standing at a distance, their arms crossed as they evaluated their ringleader’s performance .
I continued studying the wood grain of the table and repeated, “Veta a la mierda . ”
Then I felt his palm slap me upside the head—too light to be painful, too brisk to be playful—as he muttered, “Quédate con tu mierda, mamaguevo . ”
He vanished from my periphery, his fading footsteps blending into the sound of the crowd before both were drowned in the whooshing howl of an approaching passenger jet .
I slid my legs out from the table and stood before approaching him swiftly from behind. His friends tried to warn him, their urgent faces preceding words lost amid the fever pitch of the jet touching down and roaring toward the terminal. My would-be mugger had just started to turn and look my way when I grasped a fistful of his coarse hair and swung him sideways .
He careened off his feet, his head striking the corner of a table as a spray of blood erupted onto the tile floor .
As he fell, I pulled the immense .454 revolver from beneath my shirt and stabbed it toward the teens now running to help their friend. Their advance halted as suddenly as if they’d hit an invisible wall, the flurry of flailing arms and cringing expressions going stock-still as I twitched the front sight from one boy to the next. Five pairs of eyes were fixed on my pistol, its proportions surely exceeding any handgun they’d ever heard of, much less seen, as I pointed it at their chests from ten meters away .
I turned to the fallen boy, who now appeared even smaller as he curled into a fetal position, both palms covering the side of his head as the plane outside quieted for taxi .
Dropping to my knees beside him, I swatted away one of his hands and pressed the tip of the barrel into his left eye socket .
“Where do you want it, amigo ? The eye?” I cocked the hammer, releasing the cold symphony of the cylinder locking into place, and aligned a jacketed hollow point with his brain. “No, not your eye. You saw me just fine, but you didn’t notice the fucking elephant gun under my shirt .”
Lowering the barrel to his pursed lips, I applied pressure to his teeth. “What about the mouth ?”
His eyes were wild, the left one marred with the redness of a hundred tiny vessels strained by the barrel’s intrusion .
“No, you didn't have any problem running your mouth.” Then I leaned down to his face, so close I could smell his garlic-tinged sweat, and wh
ispered in a quaking voice, “That’s it…I know where the problem is .”
Scraping the barrel around the side of his bloody head, I pushed the muzzle into his ear and used the gun to tilt his head sideways against the ground. I weighted the barrel downward until I heard a sound like crumpling wrapping paper as his ear folded flat against his skull .
“You have a problem listening. I told you to fuck off. Twice. Now I'm going to show you what — ”
“POLICIA! ”
I took a long breath. My heart hammered as the blinding grip of rage loosened, if only for a moment, to reveal that a cavernous silence had descended upon the lobby. No sound from the passenger jet remained. Looking up, I saw a police officer aiming an automatic pistol at me with trembling hands .
Everything else seemed frozen in time. The ticket women were nowhere to be seen, and the remaining travelers were staring at me with expressions ranging from shock to outright horror .
“POLICIA! DROP THE WEAPON !”
Exhaling, I looked at the boy on the ground and muttered, “Start paying attention to who you’re trying to rob, amigo , because there’s not a cop in this country who’ll be able to save you from me a second time .”
I lifted my shirttail with my free hand and holstered the revolver .
Then I reached into my pocket, inciting the officer to tense his grip on the pistol with renewed determination as he shouted a flurry of Spanish words. He fell silent as I withdrew a thick roll of pastel bills as multicolored as Monopoly money that was compressed into a tight cylinder by a single rubber band .
I tossed it at him and stood, my knees popping .
“Thief,” I said, pointing to the kid on the ground .
The officer knelt and hastily pocketed the cash, then holstered his gun and began handcuffing the youth. I glanced around. The group of teenagers had long since abandoned their friend to his fate .
After hoisting the kid to his feet, the officer proceeded to make a stage production out of restoring security to the lobby, heralding loud proclamations in Spanish as he marched his prisoner toward a door behind the counter. I knew the kid would be released long before his sunset game of stickball. Had he managed to rob me, he would have given the officer a cut for turning a blind eye to the mugging. There was a reason the safe house where I lived, located within a guarded community of fugitives and misfits, existed in this part of the Dominican Republic. In this tropical ecosystem of petty crime and false appearances, no one was innocent .
Least of all me .
I wearily reclaimed my seat as tourists and locals began crossing the lobby once more, heading toward the counter as the airport staff quickly returned to business as usual .
An old woman with a wooden cross suspended from her thick neck and a battered suitcase in her hand slowed as she passed me. Her weather-beaten face seemed frozen in a matriarchal sneer of disapproval, though she managed to narrow her eyes even further to shoot me a contemptuous glare .
I asked her, “What does ‘mamaguevo ’ mean ?”
She said nothing .
“Mamaguevo, ” I repeated, snapping my fingers for emphasis. “If you’re going to stare at me with that stupid condescending expression, at least help me understand your shitty culture .”
She made a loud clucking noise, a well-practiced maneuver that served as her final judgment, before she turned her back on me and swayed off toward the counter .
It was at that moment I saw Ian .
He walked amid a crowd entering from the terminal, casually rolling his luggage behind him while his eyes swept the lobby. Although he spotted me almost immediately, he continued taking in his surroundings with an alert nervousness .
Diverting from the line of travelers heading toward the exit, he approached me .
His wiry frame moved beneath a bright red T-shirt and sunglasses hung from his collar—everything from his shorts to his sandals suggested an ignorant gringo tourist .
He stopped beside me .
I didn’t get up. “What does ‘mamaguevo ’ mean ?”
He squinted, tilting his lean face as he examined my eyes. “It means cocksucker .”
“Huh. You sure ?”
“David, you look pretty rough. Do you want to get some coffee ?”
“I already sobered up for this, Ian. So it better be good. Come on, let’s go to the house .”
Ian resolutely shook his head. “Not the house .”
I shot him a glare. “Contrary to what the in-flight magazine told you, there aren’t many places in this part of the Dominican without mobs of street urchins looking to mug tourists. So if you don’t want to go to the house, then where exactly do you suggest ?”
* * *
The beach was little more than a crescent sliver of barren sand, its narrow expanse isolated between steep, jagged hills behind us and the infinite blue sea beyond. The murky shoreline vanished and reappeared under the pulsating ebb and flow of groaning surf as I turned to survey the terrain rising behind us, feeling a tingle of anxiety creeping up my spine until it burst across my shoulders .
The palm tree-blanketed heights looming over us had become a two-dimensional shadow silhouetted by the sunset casting its final rays over the sand. Ian and I were illuminated for anyone to see, and yet he continued walking toward the waterline, oblivious, before taking a seat. I crossed the beach and stopped beside him, sliding my hands into my pockets as the early evening heat dissipated with the sun’s fall from the sky .
Turning to survey the shadowy ground behind us once more, I said, “So instead of going back to the house on a secure compound, you’ve brought us to a piece of completely open ground where a dozen snipers could be watching us right now. If you’re trying to get me to have a fucking panic attack, you’re doing an astounding job .”
Ian observed the dim sky over the Caribbean Sea as if seeing something remarkable, but I saw only a hazy mist of white with a sheet of darker clouds drifting beneath it moving slowly toward the shore .
He closed his eyes for a beat, his face still turned toward the sky. “No one’s watching us, David. And I can’t trust the house. Now please, sit down .”
“I don’t want to sit down, Ian. I’m ready to get revenge, so let’s hear this great plan of yours .”
He didn’t respond, instead removing a small, round tin from his pocket and palming the lid as he pinched some of the brown powder between his thumb and forefinger. He inserted it into his right nostril and sniffed, then repeated the process with his left before seamlessly capping the tin and sliding it back into his shorts. I watched a vein near his balding temple shift as his jaw settled. “I need you to sit down now, because you're not going to like what you're about to hear .”
I lowered myself onto the sand beside him, gathering my knees under my elbows. “Ian, the team is dead. Karma died next to me. The Handler is still alive despite the efforts of whatever clowns you sent in to kill him. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say things couldn't be much worse .”
“There was a survivor .”
The air in my lungs suspended mid-stream. My mind turned those four words over .
“You mean one of the Five Heads .”
Ian wouldn’t meet my eyes and instead stared hollowly at the sky beyond the waves. “No. A member of Boss's team survived .”
“That’s not possible .”
“I made contact with a source who used to work for the Handler’s organization. He’s in exile, and he shares our motivations. And he told me there was a survivor from Boss’s team .”
I flexed my shoulders back, feeling my spine pop. “Why do you believe him ?”
“Because I never mentioned Boss’s name. He has no idea I ever worked with Boss or that the name meant anything to me. It wasn’t an attempt at manipulation. He was stating a fact .”
A row of pelicans flying single file coasted just above the water, one breaking free from the formation and diving into a white crest of surf. I inhaled a lungful of warm, salty air and sai
d, “We both heard the Midnight call from Boss’s own voice over the radio. Matz and Ophie were in the car with him, so all three were killed. No doubt about it .”
“The longer I stay in this business, David, the more I distrust everything I thought I knew about people. There was a betrayal, and that means we heard what someone wanted us to hear .”
Raising a hand to silence him, I shot back, “You didn’t know those guys like I did, Ian. None of them would have betrayed the others. Surviving and escaping the attack, maybe, but — ”
“Whoever survived is now working for the Handler .”
Long ranks of white foam charged to the shore, dispersing into nothingness as the succeeding waves followed them to oblivion. My stomach began a freefall of dread .
What did I miss ?
I canvassed my memory for some sign of betrayal over the course of our months together, searching a fast-forwarding litany of personal moments—Matz shoulder-checking me as we transferred equipment from our truck to Joe’s plane, Ophie breathing slowly after decapitating Luka in the basement, Boss calling me an arrogant little cocksucker in the kitchen of our safe house .
I had been brutally kidnapped by those men, surviving only because I could help them kill, and yet I’d gone on to accept their sales pitch in full. Karma told me as much when we shared cigarettes on the porch behind the team house .
