SAFE HAVENS: Shadow Masters (A Sean Havens Black Ops Novel Book 1)

by J. T. Patten

  “I’m home, baby. I’m home. I’m here for you. You keep fighting and I will be here with you. I’m not leaving. Ever. I’m here.” Finally.

  Lars too had walked up to the bed and was holding Maggie’s blanket-covered big toe as he had done since she was a child. He gently squeezed and wiggled it.

  Lars added in a voice spoken to a baby, as if she were his own, “Uncle Lizzard loves you too sweetie pie. And if I have to go the cemetery myself…”

  Lars let go of the toe, his voice transforming abruptly to one of deep-seated anger, “…I am going to make sure those fuckers who did this are buried face down so they see the fires that await their souls. Sean, I’m going to the house. Call me if you need anything.”

  Havens said nothing but watched his brother-in-law leave the room. Havens looked at Lars’ hands as he left, half expecting to see a massive caveman club clenched in it. Nobody messes with Lars Bjorklund’s family, Havens said to himself. His sister was the last of his next of kin.

  Chapter 20

  “Thanks for the update, Jason. After the funeral you need to inform Havens that we need him in DC for the next couple weeks.”

  “Sir, he won’t go for that. Not while his daughter is still in the hospital. He’s going to need some time off.”

  “You can let him know that this contract his company has him on offers a one week bereavement time off. Then we will either need him here or he will have to seek other employment.”

  Draeger looked at his fingernails while on the phone in casual indifference to the call and the topic. He bit a hanging cuticle and spit it to the carpet.

  “I don’t have to tell you what his answer is going to be.”

  “Jason, you don’t have to tell me anything. I served with him. You just have to tell Havens what his orders are and what his allowable absence will be.”

  “Then what? He’s going to blow up on me.”

  “Handle it. Then we start transferring him to domestic.”

  “And the brother-in-law?”

  “We have him all taken care of already, but I appreciate your information. That was a good catch on your part.”

  “I thought you would be surprised.”

  “Some things certainly get past me, but fortunately, we were in a good position on this one. I will be taking it from here once you cut Havens off. Be understanding and don’t burn any bridges with him. Be a friend.”

  “We really aren’t friends, but he is a good guy.”

  A good guy, my ass. “We’ll take care of him; we just need him to consider some new opportunities that will be better suited for him given the recent tragedy.”

  “Then why can’t you just tell him that you are going to transfer him?”

  “First, and never forget this, we are compartmentalized. Buck stops with you in this chain of the network. He is still, and will remain so, unaware of my involvement. Second, I need this to unfold on his terms, not ours. Or so he will think. I’ll handle it from here.”

  “Roger that, chief.”

  “Talk soon. And solid job on Yemen. Place is unraveling just as we were hoping. Serious operational win there.”

  “Thanks. Havens was pretty pissed at the bona fides he was working with that the Agency passed him. Sounded like he also had a real serious issue with security. I told him that I would follow up on that.”

  “Well let me start with the first. Those guys don’t know what they are doing, but we have to use them. Second, thanks again for bringing it to my attention. I will handle it. No need to discuss further with Havens since we are rolling him out.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Speak soon.”

  “Out.”

  Out. Draeger sat back in his chair. Man, we definitely have to find a way to use less military jargon in our communications. I am sure we will come under scrutiny or surveillance at some time. Have to think about who we are supposed to be and not who we are. Eh, still have time. Too many bigger fish to fry and we can always just make our tapes disappear.

  He was fidgeting with the seat swivel below. He liked being a man of power and the leather chair, fake as it was, still gave Draeger the feeling of authority. Master gamesman authority at that.

  And welcome to papa, Havens. I need you to get these amateurs to the next stage so they don’t screw things up and then we can pin some of it on you.

  Going to have to pay you a visit. Also have to figure out how to keep you and Lars apart. Didn’t count on that one, you sneaky fuck. How did I never catch that even at your house? What to do, what to do.

  Lars could have an accident, but that would look suspicious.

  The rape and murder was bad enough. Still a stretch, but it will have them guessing for years.

  Can’t let Bjorklund pick up on anything there. Maybe get him locked away for something that would piss off Havens.

  Prostitution? Gambling? Nah, he’s single. No one would care.

  Draeger put his feet up on his desk. He was looking around the room to fuel his creativity. He liked playing God with other people’s lives. Manipulating others was far easier than managing his own exterior life and feelings of powerlessness. He was increasingly becoming an introvert when dealing with people eye to eye.

  Clandestine work in Southeastern Europe, Somalia, Syria, and Lebanon had rattled his nerves. Iran had pushed him over the edge.

  Havens seemed to have managed a bit better, no doubt with the help of Christina. She had helped Draeger too at times, though she didn’t know it. Sometimes she helped him by her simple inquiry as to how he was doing and actually meaning it. She could sense that there was a hole in Draeger and felt bad for him. While she didn’t know what was wrong, she knew he was an emotionally wounded warrior and genuinely wanted to know if he was OK.

  He’d miss her. He loved when she would touch his arm. But he needed her husband more. It was just business. Since he couldn’t have her, why should anyone?

  Draeger still retreated to the closet for good sleep. His panic room would be finished in another month. The new panic room would have top of the line electronics and the personal comfort of a dial-a-mattress. He still chose to make the final construction of the doorway to the secured room through a small 3’ x 3’ opening in his closet.

  The closet was always a fast retreat if they came for him. He remembered the pounding on the hotels and apartment doors while operating discretely overseas. He never knew if it was the ruckus of guests and renters or if it was the secret police.

  He was so tired.

  Playing these games drained him more. He wanted secure sleep.

  Games! Ha, sports bookie gambling debt on the games, that would be no surprise for Lars Bjorklund. But now we gave him too much money for that to be a problem. How could we ironically have a guy on the payroll who is family to another? Fucked that up but good.

  Kiddie porn? Nah, I don’t even want to go there. Too low. Have to sort this out.

  And Maggie, God bless you, you little fighter. You have created the perfect thing for your dad to hold on to without completely losing it. Hadn’t counted on that part either. Genius move. What is the chance of that happening from a kill shot to the head? This ended up perfect. Fate, faith, and a lot of luck!

  Draeger bit into an apple that he pulled from a small nylon cooler. It cracked with crisp freshness.

  Can’t have you wake up, but need you to hang on for another few months. I think Mr. Mann has a friend that will help us out with that. Get you all strung out if you don’t die here real quick. Speaking of which, wonder if your boyfriend is in the house yet. Harrison should have that taken care of soon.

  With another bite the apple remained held in Draeger’s teeth as he typed on his laptop and then reached for his encrypted cell phone. He sucked the juices and saliva until his hands were freed and finished another bite with a satisfying crunch.

  Damn, this apple is good. Pick up, Harrison. Shit, I shouldn’t bother you. I’m sure things are fine. I’ll wait.

  Draeger took ano
ther bite. Every bite as loud and juicy as before.

  The girl at the store was right, Fuji apples were great. He wished he had spoken to her more. He knew he could have taken her to bed. The night terrors and panic attacks were killing his opportunities for sexual conquests. He was too humiliated to let anyone into his life. They wouldn’t like what they found anyway.

  Chapter 21

  Brock Bardal had been registered as a sex offender in Illinois since his release from Tinley Park’s Mental Health facility. He could function very well when he took his medication and had held his job for nearly two years. His employer, a regional non-profit thrift store, had been giving Brock very encouraging performance appraisals.

  He no longer wanted to hurt himself or others.

  Brock’s medicines were first withheld two weeks ago. His demeanor started to change with no treatment.

  The black demons had come in to his home and hurt him.

  They said he wasn’t done healing.

  They flushed his meds down the toilet and made him watch, saying medicine was just keeping him from what he was meant to do.

  They told Brock that his mother would be coming back for him. Dr. Rubins had told Brock in the hospital that his mother had died years ago. Now Brock was not so sure.

  The demons had put Brock in the basement. He hated being alone. It was dark in the basement and he was scared. They played the movies a lot. He wanted to touch those girls. They had taken him out and let him have the girl in the big building, and he liked that. She was pretty like the other girls he used to watch and touch.

  The men told him that he should be proud of himself. If he was good, the demons may even take him to see his mother and let him have more girls. He wanted that ever so.

  Harrison Mann gave Brock a knife and a laptop computer. Brock was told to put the computer under the mattress upstairs in the girl’s bedroom to the left of the stairs. The back door didn’t need to be picked and Brock had been quiet as they slipped through the shadows of backyards and dimly lit streets.

  Brock was instructed to sit on the floor and pull the knife over his wrists to let out the poison. It had to be all out before his mother would come for him. She would see that he was trying to make things better and she would love him again.

  If Brock did it right, they could go back to his home. No more hospitals. He could go back to work and get his medicine back. No more basements. Brock wanted to make this demon happy. The demon told him that after he cut his wrists, if he really wanted to, he could try cutting at his neck to let all the bad thoughts come out from his mind. Brock was indeed having bad thoughts. It would be good to let them go.

  This demon was always nice to him and never hit or yelled at him like the others who came into the basement at night. Brock was going to do a good job.

  Harrison knew the alarms would be off in the Havens house. He had been told that investigators would no longer be coming to the house and that Havens, while in town, would be at the hospital. Harrison would send Brock in, confident that Brock was now on his own delusional jihadi mission to enter the heavens of mommy. Fucking freak this kid is. He gave Harrison the heebie-jeebies.

  With little experience dealing with the mentally ill, Harrison figured he could treat this guy like an interrogation detainee. Keep him in the dark. Keep him in his shit. While surrogates of the Activity had handpicked Brock for the rape from some police reports, when they learned of his delusions of beasts from the underworld, the value of this ticking time bomb increased exponentially. A little reading of his stolen file and some psychology tips from the internet, and they were on their way to augment tradecraft that was already developed for making people do things they would not normally do. Exploitation was their business. Brock was yet another of their helpless unwitting pawns.

  Harrison disrupted Brock’s sleep patterns, exploited fears, used a lot of carrot and stick (mostly stick) techniques to push the buttons on this guy’s psychosis. It didn’t take long before the guy had completely lost it. It had been fun for a while, but lately Harrison was having to babysit so Brock didn’t kill himself before being tasked. Harrison was not going back to square one if this lab rat croaked.

  Upon opening the back door in the darkness of night, Harrison had sat Brock down at the kitchen table. Harrison turned on his LED flashlight and asked Brock to lay the laptop down on the table and lay one wrist up. Harrison instructed Brock on how he was going to make the cut. Harrison wasn’t taking any chances and had decided to get things going. Brock pulled the knife across his wrist under the pressure of Harrison’s grasp.

  Like a kindergarten teacher instructing a student how to cut out his first outlined paper shape, Harrison’s gloved hand re-guided the knife over Brock’s wrist with increased pressure cutting the vein that started the drain of Brock’s life.

  “Good Brock, I am very pleased. Do it just like that back and forth and criss-crossed down. Good, that is perfect. Your mom will be so pleased. Now go upstairs and put the laptop under the bed.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I am scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “It’s dark up there. The demons will be waiting and they will lock me up and hurt me.”

  Harrison leaned in closer to Brock. “No, Brock, the demons are not here, but they will be if you don’t get your ass up there.”

  “No, I’m scared.”

  Harrison grabbed Brock’s shirt in his fist. “Fine, I will tell the demons it is time for them to eat your mother’s eyes out so she can never see you again you fucking crazy shit!”

  “No!” Brock yanked the knife away from his wrist and slashed at Harrison, catching him completely off guard. When his motion reached arm’s length it retracted back towards Harrison’s side, the knife tip catching Harrison’s black nylon jacket and entering just enough flesh to make him flinch.

  Harrison’s instinctive movement to jump back drew the knife in further. He grasped Brock’s hand forcing a guided spear thrust a half inch into Brock’s neck and twisted back and forth to rupture the jugular. Blood pulsed but Brock remained in an altered state.

  Wasting all this damn time creating a puppet when we could have just done this ourselves and dropped off your dead body. Stupid idea, Draeger. You twisted fuck. Now you have me caught up in this crazy ass shit.

  From outside, Harrison heard a car door slam.

  “Brock, the demons are here. They are bringing your mother. Hurry, run upstairs and turn on the light. They won’t go in there with the light on and your mother will be able to find you. Run. Then get your other wrist. Go.”

  Brock looked down at the blood on his hands and wrist.

  Brock now leaking life quickly, ran through the kitchen up the flight of stairs.

  Harrison looked around at nothing in particular.

  Who the fuck is coming to the house? Shit!

  “I can’t find a light,” Brock called down.

  Fuck it all to Hell.

  “Hurry, they are coming. Rub up and down against the wall and try to find a switch.”

  Light shone down.

  “Get started and don’t talk anymore or they will hear you.”

  Harrison had seen enough blood loss in his days that he figured Brock had less than five minutes given the parallel knife cuts to the vein and the arterial nic that was evident from the decent spurt of blood illuminated by the flashlight.

  As an insurance policy, Harrison had given Brock a drink earlier laced with Coumadin, an anticoagulant blood thinning medicine. Best to poison the lab rat a bit.

  Time to bail. Shit, the laptop.

  Still calm, Harrison could hear the front door unlocking; he opened the laptop on the table and turned it on. He laid the computer on the floor with the computer screen and keyboard laying face down before exiting the back door. He hoped the girl had a password protected system that may have looked like her rapist had returned, for some reason tried to get on to her laptop, became frustrated and threw it to
the ground. Then, due to the mental anguish of the whole thing, killed himself.

  This is such a stupid idea. Holes in the whole operation. Draeger, you or these guys are coming up with shitty CONOPs and CONPLANs all around.

  On the other hand…maybe that was a good thing. Run the cops in so many directions it is easier to just leave it as a complete head-shaker making no sense to either the hunted or the hunters. A very untidy cold case. Maybe Draeger does know what he’s doing.

  From Harrison’s perspective, their small unit would still be clean of any association. They had accounted for loose ends, left clean sites, and short of a small stab wound, which Harrison had decided he could fix on his own as his personal secret, they were in the clear yet again.

  As he ran through the backyard he shook his head at the quiet neighborhood unaware of the mayhem transpiring while they went about their dull lives.

  You people are so clueless.

  The evening’s moisture on the grass brushed and wiped evidence of the blood droplets from Harrison’s boot sole—save the two imprints on the Havenses’ kitchen floor.

  Lars entered the foyer, flipped the light switch on, and could immediately see the blood stains on the stairway carpet. He assumed from the murders. It was his first time in the house since his sister was killed. He took a deep breath.

  Same ole same ole every time.

  With some variance to the scenes, certain elements of murders always looked the same to Lars after more than twenty years in the police force.

  Hello? What is this?

  Lars saw fresh blood trailing from the ceramic tiles in the hallway through the foyer and up the stairs with smears on the banister rail. Wrong color for old blood.

  “Hello?”

  Lars never carried his police issue sidearm. For him it simply got in the way of his work as an investigator. He always rationalized that everyone he looked at was already dead, and when he was investigating potential suspects, he always had an armed uniform with him. There simply was no need to carry anything big.