Vengeance Calling: An Action Thriller Novel (David Rivers Book 4)

by Jason Kasper

  My mind began swimming with disbelief. The line between terrorism and what I had involuntarily become a part of—no, what I had singlehandedly facilitated—was becoming increasingly more nebulous.

  I assessed my situation. A holstered pistol on Dustin’s hip, another handgun carried by the man who had driven me back to the cabin, and a mobile satellite phone on the desk. I checked about for other weapons and saw none.

  “What’s wrong?” Dustin asked. “You’re awful quiet.”

  “Nothing.” Minutes away from Sage’s return, I thought, and less than an hour until the Handler was dead. “It’s just that this is all a lot to take in. I spent months in this cabin, living on faith. And now…”

  “Now the Handler’s about to die.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Seemed like a long shot for all of us. But you’re the one who went to Myanmar and pulled off the toughest part.” He looked up at me admiringly, eyes squinting with pride as he concluded, “You made all this possible.”

  I turned toward the cabin door in a daze.

  “Where are you going?” he called, lowering his cigarette in objection.

  “I need some air.” I waved a hand idly around my face. “Too much smoke in here.”

  “Sorry, man. But Sage will be back anytime now—don’t be long.”

  “I won’t.”

  I stumbled away from the lurking haze of cigarette smoke into the clean, fresh mountain air, the sun hitting my face through the treetops as a breeze washed over me.

  At that moment I remembered the Rio pastor whose religious service I’d ended to use his chapel as an Alamo for my last stand. Shortly before he’d left me to a fatal confrontation with Agustin’s kill team in the favela, the pastor had prayed a blessing over me, and in that moment one line was burned in my mind.

  May you deliver him from sin and find him worthy to conquer a greater evil.

  Now I was on the brink of everything I had been fighting for: Ian’s freedom, the Handler’s death, and a one-way ticket to join the war in South America.

  And in the process, I’d somehow enabled the total annihilation of Rocinha. I’d personally delivered the highly enriched uranium back from Africa, unwittingly handing it over to people who would use it to build a bomb.

  Now the substance I’d recovered from Somalia would incinerate thousands if not tens of thousands, all because of another item I’d just recovered in Myanmar.

  My father’s voice on his deathbed: It’s the only stain I’ll never wash off my soul, son. Whatever you do in life, never harm the innocents. Swear it to me.

  I placed my hands on my knees, bent over double, and retched into the long grass.

  RESURRECTION

  Ordo ab chao

  -Out of chaos comes order

  15

  “At this point we’re just trying to keep him comfortable—”

  “Doctor,” the sheriff’s deputy beside me interrupted. “This is Mr. Rivers’s son, David. I got him here as fast as I could.”

  The doctor waved away the nurses and knelt to eye level with me, his chocolate hair precisely matching the shade of his eyes as he looked into mine.

  “Your dad has been in a car accident, David. He’s been badly hurt, and it’s very important that you see him now.”

  “Stop stalling,” I blurted, unable to think of anything else to say.

  He looked at me strangely, then opened the door beside us to usher me in.

  Two nurses were hunched over a hospital bed, their backs to us, until the doctor announced, “Let’s give the patient a few moments with his son.”

  The nurses left, watching me with both sympathy and fear, and a moment later I saw him.

  My father was lying on the bed, hooked up to machines that chirped and blinked, as I approached him.

  His face was half-covered by bandages. The flesh of his visible cheek was singed red and mottled by blackened flesh. A single exposed eye wept profusely amid the burns, his pupil almost iridescent beneath a torrent of tears.

  I didn’t cry at first, instead feeling a strange detached sense of fascination and sorrow. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  He replied in his Irish lilt, his tone as calm as I had ever heard it, “It’s not your fault, son. Don’t ever blame yourself—I’ve had this coming to me for some time now.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a smart boy, and if you ever look into it…I can’t bear for you to hear from someone else. You deserve better from me.”

  My lower lip began to tremble, a void of desolate sadness opening within me for the first time. “Look into…what?”

  The door opened and a priest entered, regally clutching a Bible to his side.

  “Mr. Rivers,” the priest began, “if you would like last rites we should—”

  “Get your brainwashed, costumed arse out of here and take your fairy tale savior with you, you miserable bastard.” His voice trailed into a ragged gasp as he finished, “I need to talk to my son.”

  The priest left, and my father lowered his voice so much that I had to lean in to hear him.

  “It’s a lie, boy.”

  I felt my eyes filling with hot tears as I managed, “What is?”

  “All of it.” He winced through an unseen wave of pain, blinking his eye quickly as he steeled his focus. “Everything I told you about my past and why I came to America is a lie. My name is a lie.”

  “Why wouldn’t you just”—I sniffled hard, struggling not to cry—“tell me the truth?”

  “In Ireland I worked with some of my countrymen to fight British rule. I did things, David. Horrible things. One of those things—the worst of the lot—ended up killing civilians. I didn’t mean for it to, but it did. Families, David. Children killed, because of me.”

  Tears spilled over my eyelids and ran down my face, and I angrily wiped at them with the back of my hand as my father’s tone grew harsher, more stern.

  “It’s the only stain I’ll never wash off my soul, son. Whatever you do in life, never harm the innocents. Swear it to me.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded resolutely. “I promise.”

  “I fled to America not just from the British but also from the men I used to work with. Changed my name, met your mother. Tried to be a good man, to be a good father to you.”

  “You are,” I croaked, a new torrent of scalding tears blurring the lower half of my vision. “You’re my hero, Dad.”

  He reached for my hand and I gave it to him. His skin felt hot, leathery, as he squeezed my fingers. “It’s never too late to become a better person, and the only failure in life is a failure to change for the better, every day and in whatever way one finds possible. Don’t ever let a mistake define you. Look at what I meant to you, look at the man I raised, and you go do the same. Make your mark with the triumph of your spirit over the absurd and meaningless void we’ve been born into. And when you start to doubt yourself, I want you to know that—”

  “To know what?”

  His eye remained locked on mine, but it moved no more.

  Everything sounded like I was underwater after that. White uniforms flooding the room, someone’s hands pulling me back into the hall as if in slow motion. My view filled with whitewashed hospital walls amid the nauseating smell of antiseptic, and I never saw him again.

  I threw up three times in quick succession, the contents of my stomach disappearing into the long grass outside the cabin.

  Recovering from the effort, I stood and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Then I looked to the sky as if it held some answer, but I saw only treetops blotting out a light blue blanket overhead and so I started walking.

  I wandered into the boulder-clustered field around the cabin, a space I’d explored tentatively for the first time over seven months ago. My head was churning in disgust as I recalled the swarming mass of civilians in the favela racing for their safety when the enemy shooters opened fire on the crowd, trying to kill me. Then the little girl who’d discove
red me in her kitchen, the one I’d had to pull to safety as Agustin’s kill team passed through. Her resentful expression after our parting encounter, the trauma on her psyche leaving my eyes stinging with tears as I walked out, unable to meet her gaze. I thought about the nuclear detonation amid the tightly packed homes, a fiery red mushroom cloud of carnage rising from the hillside slums between the jungled mountains of Rio.

  Shaken, I walked slowly around the side of the cabin, then out back.

  The ax was still wedged into the stump where I’d left it two weeks earlier, its handle canted forty-five degrees skyward beside my long-forgotten pile of chopped wood. I approached it with a dreamlike feeling of weightlessness.

  I placed both palms on the handle, and its weathered surface fell easily into my grasp as I wrenched it free of the stump.

  I edged the cabin door open with the toe of my boot.

  Dustin the radio operator stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the desk and looked up.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  My mouth suddenly felt parched. I couldn’t speak. The pastor’s voice in my mind: I hope I see you again and feel the difference God’s hand has worked in your life.

  Dustin watched me strangely. “What’s the matter with you, bro? You look like you just saw a…ghost.”

  His voice faltered on the last word as his eyes fell upon the ax I held in one hand, close to my side, the heavy blade almost touching the cabin floor.

  His gaze moved from the ax to my face as he squinted in disbelief. This wasn’t happening—was it?

  Then his chair scraped backward and he began to rise, reaching for the pistol on his hip.

  “BRETT!”

  The cabin roof was too low for an overhead swing. Instead I raised the blade at a sideways angle, almost hitting the wall beside me before I swung it into Dustin as hard as I could.

  The ax struck him in the juncture between his shoulder and neck, cleaving his flesh and bone open. Blood erupted from the savage gash and he screamed horribly, the sheer force of my swing knocking his body into the table and scattering papers across the floor.

  I yanked the ax free as I heard Brett’s footsteps running from the adjacent room, and I managed to blindly swing the ax to my rear in a tight, carving blow. The heavy blade slammed into Brett’s stomach as he entered. A great rattling howl of air exited his mouth as a hot splash of blood and entrails fell onto the floor. He followed his guts to the ground, sagging in place as I pulled the ax free.

  He rolled onto his side, starting to draw the gun as his face turned an eerie shade of milky cream. I tried to pull the ax free as his pistol cleared the holster but it was still lodged in his belly. Releasing the ax handle, I raised a knee above my waist and stomped his head with my boot. I could feel the skin of his face sliding on muscle, skull fragments grinding together in a single explosion as his hand went limp and the pistol fell away, forgotten.

  I turned to Dustin. He was splayed out on the floor, surrounded by the documents and maps of Sage’s coup. He was still breathing, his eyes wide, though he was virtually paralyzed by my strike. His right hand rested on the floor beside the pistol on his belt, his fingers involuntarily quaking in the tremor of death. Blood pooled over the maps and papers that had scattered from my attack, the sheer volume making it inconceivable that he was still alive.

  Yet he was.

  I reached down and picked up Brett’s abandoned pistol, then approached the radio operator until I stood beside his head. His wet eyes met mine, the expression one of terror, though his face was frozen in a stroke-like state.

  A final line from the pastor’s blessing ran through my mind, unsolicited.

  If not here, then when all the great warriors of eternity are gathered around the fire of heaven.

  Angling the barrel toward Dustin’s head, I fired once and put him down like a rabid dog: a creature once innocent and loyal now corrupted by darkness so vile that the only redemption was death.

  Sliding the pistol into my belt, I found the mobile satellite phone on the floor. It rested atop a single sheet of paper with the succession plan for the coup—a lone conspirator listed as the Handler’s successor, taking control only to be killed by Sage when she returned.

  As I read the name, everything became clear to me—how Sage had known about the Handler’s test in advance, how she’d been able to fake my death.

  I used Dustin’s butane lighter to ignite the corner of the paper, then dropped the flaming page atop the cigarette butts in the ashtray and watched it burn to a blackened crisp. Then I looked around in a panic for a grid coordinate to my location. Sage was going to return soon, and I needed to ambush her with a pistol before she witnessed the bloodbath in her command post.

  Unable to quickly find a grid location amid the debris, I snatched the satellite phone and ran outside.

  Extending the phone’s antenna and tilting it skyward, I hastily dialed the number I’d memorized before my feigned assassination attempt at the Executive Karoga—a direct line to the Handler.

  The phone beeped an objection.

  There was no satellite link.

  I looked at the tree cover clustered overhead, frantically searching for a clear spot. Finding none, I raced to the side of the cabin and clambered up the hillside toward high ground.

  I moved with a brisk sense of finality, following the route I’d taken many times before, my eyes riveted to the terrain features that guided my journey. Wandering off the trail and getting lost would be a devastating and possibly fatal blow to my plan—I was now fully committed, the evidence of my betrayal in plain view in the command post. This gave me considerable latitude with the Handler but meant nothing if I couldn’t reach him before he touched the poisoned pen.

  I finally emerged beside the crystalline hilltop lake I’d visited nearly every day of my isolation, approaching its bank where the sky was unobstructed. Through a break in the tree line on the far side, I saw the snow-covered slopes of faraway mountains.

  I dialed the number once more, bringing the phone to my ear as I waited through a long series of beeps interspersed by silence. Holding the pistol in my right hand, I spun in a circle to make sure I was alone.

  When the line connected, I heard the eerily monotone accent that sent a shudder down my spine.

  The Handler said, “Am I speaking to a dead man?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Welcome back.” He didn’t sound surprised in the slightest. “What information do you have for me?”

  “I don’t have much time, so listen closely,” I ordered, whirling around again to make sure no one had followed me uphill. “I know the plan to assassinate you. And it’s too late for you to intervene.”

  “Why call if I cannot stop it?”

  “You can’t, but I still can. And don’t try to cross me on this—I’ve got an insurance policy.”

  I was about to make a deal with the devil, but that deal—and the devil—were both things I desperately needed in that moment.

  “What insurance?” he asked.

  “You were obviously right to suspect Sage. But I’ve got the name of another inside conspirator that I won’t divulge to you until you agree to my terms publicly—I want Parvaneh present to confirm, because your word means nothing to me.”

  “She will not be thrilled to see you, David, but if her assurance that I will honor the terms of our agreement—”

  “Fuck the original agreement.” I tensed my hand on the pistol. “Here are the new terms. Ian’s no longer your slave. He will be freed from the Mist Palace, completely and for life. You’ll still send me back to the Outfit to join the war in South America, but not as a shooter—I want to lead my own team. That’s it. You’ve got three seconds to decide before I hang up and you die. I’m not sparing you to save Ian again.”

  One second of silence, then two.

  “I accept,” he declared. “Where are you?”

  “I’ll call you back when I can figure out my location. Then I need you to sen
d the Outfit to get me—they’re the only ones you can trust right now. Until then, lock down your compound. No one else in or out. Don’t eat anything, don’t touch anything, don’t see anyone until I get there. Your conspirator is higher-ranking than you’re going to—”

  Two hands clenched on my right arm, flinging me sideways, followed by a knee strike to my elbow that caused the pistol to fall from my grip. I slammed into the wild grass surrounding the lake, releasing the satellite phone as I rolled to my side to defend myself.

  A sharp kick to my face flung my head back, and I scrambled away on my hands to see Sage standing over me. Her hair was down, unkempt, eyes alight with fury as she knelt to pick up the satellite phone. Pressing a button to end the call, she flung it at me.

  I raised an elbow as the phone struck me and fell to the ground.

  “What did you SAY?” she screamed. Her face was alive with rage, veins in her throat bulging like worms crawling beneath her skin.

  The fallen pistol was on the ground a few feet behind her, and I clambered to my feet.

  “He knows.” I wiped a slick of hot blood off my lip. “Your coup is over—”

  As the last word left my mouth, she lunged forward and cracked a jab against my jaw, followed by a sharp uppercut into my gut that doubled me over.

  “I saved your life!”

  She grabbed my shoulders and drove her knee into my sternum, knocking the air from my lungs. I sagged into her grasp, unable to breathe.

  “You’d be dead without me!”

  She flung me to the ground, where I bounced and started to roll. Then she kicked me in the ribs with blinding speed.

  “I would have given you everything!”