by mike Evans
Gabriel got up, running in a crouched position as quickly as he could while staying as low as possible. He kept his rifle slung and ran with his mini assault rifle fully extended and ready to kill. He scanned the distance in front of him, making sure that if he was looking at it, that he was aiming at it. He could remember his instructor, Clary, from week one at training screaming at the top of his lungs. “By god, son, if you don’t raise that fucking rifle, I am going to take it from you and insert it in your ass!”
He shook the voice of his instructor out of his head, but not the lessons. Gabriel made his way near the entrance, moving one slow step at a time until he was at the gate. He pulled a pair of wire cutters from his pocket and made a hole large enough that he could slip under. Gabriel made his way to the building’s entrance and used a mirror to look around the corner without having to make his head a target. Gabriel knew that there was little chance that the space was going to be unoccupied.
He pulled two smoke grenades from his belt, ripping the pin out of each of them. He tossed them into the courtyard, one close and the other towards the back of the open space. He slipped on a gas mask and bounced in place, giving it a ten second count to let the smoke fill the space. Gabriel ducked low, crouched, and flipped down his second set of eyes. He hit the power switch, seeing everything in thermal heat signatures. He ran along the edge of the inside, firing silenced shots. He took men out in a calculated, cool technique, making sure that nothing was alive by the time he was done. When there was no one left to kill, he moved inside the building. Gabriel checked his watch, knowing damn well that he was going to need to move quickly. He wasn’t quite sure what he would do if they had broken the legs of the asset.
Gabriel walked through the hall. He would have never found the man if it hadn’t been for the agonizing screams of pain coming from the around the corner of a very long hallway. Gabriel walked quickly, staying down. He didn’t see any security cameras and he smiled briefly. The drug lords always thought that their gates were impenetrable and therefore their inner space secure.
Gabriel got to the end of the corner and looked around quickly. He didn’t hesitate when another scream erupted. This scream was a long-lasting, blood-curdling scream. He sprinted for the doorway, pulled a flash-bang grenade, and tossed it through. Gabriel’s optimism went up when he looked in and saw Alejandro Sonra, the head of this cartel and architect of their cocaine infrastructure, standing over Raul with a makeshift weapon that he looked like he’d been using. It had two small sticks with a metal wire between the two. The wire was dripping with blood and on the ground were four fingers that could only have come off of Raul’s left hand.
The men saw Gabriel moving across the front of the torture room like a ghost, but they were too slow. They heard the clinking of the grenade skidding across the floor and screams of “granada, granada, down down!” They were too late as it detonated, blinding and sending them into a disorientation like they’d never known. Gabriel moved in through the smoke, picturing where they had been in his mind, and where their hunched-over forms on the ground would be.
He found the first man and slammed a knee into his face and when his head snapped up Gabriel slit his throat. Then with a second strike, he sent the knife up under his chin, finishing him. The second man ran towards Gabriel still coughing, but knew that his life was over if he did not do something about the gringo that had run through the door, killing without asking questions. It went without saying that he would be next. He screamed his war cry, letting Gabriel know he was coming. He swung a machete at a straight down arch on Gabriel who was keeping low. Gabriel caught it with his left hand and sliced at the man’s wrist with his knife, causing him to drop the machete. Then, using a two-hand assist, he plunged the knife into the man’s chest, cutting down and pulling with everything he had, splitting him from chest to pelvic. The man’s watering eyes were already dead before his guts emptied out onto the floor.
The leader of the group tried pulling his pistol as his last man was gutted like a pig. Gabriel brought his arm up over his head with practiced perfection and threw his knife, embedding it into the man’s throat. He gripped it with both hands and watched as Gabriel made his path through the room, coming out of the smoke towards him, placed a silenced handgun next to his head, and fired a single shot. Alejandro fell to the ground hard where his blood pooled on the white tiled floor.
Raul was screaming at the top of his lungs, “Nenhum fantasma! Shoot nenhum fantasma… shoot!”
Gabriel made a calming motion with his hands and whispered, “I’m not going to shoot you and I am not a ghost.”
The man asked, “Você é o diabo?”
Gabriel cut the man loose, shrugging at that question. He said, “Para aqueles que o pecado.” Only to those that have sinned. The man nodded, making the sign of the cross with the fingers that he had left.
Gabriel helped him up out of the seat, looked at the man's appearance, and figured he could walk. He assessed the amount of blood spread on the floor, knowing the majority of it was from his new acquaintance. He took a picture of the leader and sent it to his ex-handler in the CIA with a message saying, “I’m out. Here is the last hit that I’ll ever do for you.”
He looked at Raul’s hands and ripped one of the dead men’s shirts into strips and made a makeshift bandage out of it, wrapping his hands with enough clean material to protect them from bacteria as they made their way through the jungle. He let Raul put his weight on his shoulder and knew that he would never make it out of the jungle with this man in his current condition.
Gabriel took him back out towards the front and hid him in the corner. He ran across the courtyard to a soft-top jeep and turned it over, checking that it had gas. He moved to the other vehicles and crawled underneath them. They were giant transport trucks, and Gabriel used his knife to puncture the gas tanks. As the gas made its way down the driveway, he climbed into the jeep, pulled it around, and half-carried Raul into the backseat where he passed out almost instantly. The thought of relief and sanctuary was more than he could handle.
Gabriel sped past the cars, pulling a flare from his vest and tossing it beneath the vehicles lined up in the yard. The men running and screaming after them never saw it coming. The cars erupted across the yard one after another in a succession of fireballs, lighting the dark night, some of them flipping in the air. Gabriel shifted it into top gear, putting as much space as he could between himself and the compound. He didn’t know if there would be anyone left to tell the story of what happened but hoped that everyone that had deserved it, lay dead.
The two men drove hard through the night, stopping outside of Manuas where Gabriel called one of the company doctors, certain that he wouldn’t know about his parting of ways with the CIA. He spoke quickly and explained the injuries. He had gone over the man, giving him a field check to see what if anything else seemed wrong with him. After seconds, he was sure that the man would need to have his ribs taped tightly and his hands disinfected and wrapped to protect what fingers were still left on each hand.
Two hours later, he had filled the jeep back up and thanked the doctor. The two men headed to the rendezvous point where they would abandon it and fly to safety and freedom. He promised Raul once they got to North America, it was going to be very difficult for them to get rid of him once he went up knocking on the front doors of Langley. He had information that no one else did, and that would be enough to give them good reason to keep him around.
Gabriel parked a few miles away from the landing strip. He pulled into a patch of trees, circling through the jungle until the jeep was lost in the brush. Raul asked, “How long until we are able to get out of here? They will find us eventually; there are eyes everywhere. You and I will die if they find us.”
Gabriel pulled his satellite phone, hoping that it was the last call he would need to make on it. He looked over at Raul, shaking his head no, “I’m not that easy to kill. They paid a lot of money for me to learn what I can do and I do it very w
ell.”
Raul, having seen a short example of this, nodded thinking that maybe he was diabo branco, the white devil. The two men sat in silence as Gabriel contemplated the future, and Raul was praying that, by some chance, the two of them would make it out of there and live yet another day.
Just as he was readying himself to call, the light above them went dark. The two looked up and saw the Widow Maker flying high above them, shading everything for a moment with the cargo plane’s wingspan. The plane circled around, coming in low in a field, and then coming to a stop. The rear of the plane opened and Gabriel floored the jeep back out of the jungle's edge and towards the plane.
Forsyth came out of the back of the plane, holding a machine gun to his shoulder already raised, aiming sharp at the two men. He lowered it when he saw Gabriel holding up one hand. He lowered the rifle for a moment, and then, to Gabriel’s surprise, brought it back up quickly. Gabriel reached for his own gun, pulling it out to aim at Forsyth, hoping that he had not been double-crossed. He knew the CIA and wouldn’t put it past them to try and take him out quickly. He peered into the rearview mirror of the jeep for a second and saw a small army of men coming out of the tree line.
Gabriel floored the jeep, yelling to Raul and pointing at the gas pedal. “Keep it down, and keep us on the path towards the plane. Gabriel climbed up out of his seat, standing with his machine gun, and took aim at the men closing in on the jeep.
Gabriel squeezed the trigger, taking the men out one after another. They rolled up next to the plane where Raul practically fell out of the jeep and hobbled into the rear of the plane. Gabriel pulled the jeep around so that it was pointing at the men, who were still in pursuit. He jammed the gas pedal down hard as the engine screamed in protest. He reached under the backside of the jeep, securing the last trick he had in his bag. Gabriel put the jeep in drive and got clear of the vehicle. It raced wildly across the field, bouncing and jumping. When it got within thirty yards of the pursuing men, Gabriel hit the switch, setting the blast from beneath the jeep. It flew over backwards, making the men veer their vehicles. Gabriel motioned to Forsyth to run inside and the two sprinted up the back entrance, punching the button to raise and close the back cargo door.
Once inside, Forsyth moved with purpose to the front of the long plane. He pushed the throttle levers up slowly at first and then quickly, making the men almost lose their balance. He was thankful as hell that he had left the plane running.
Raul hobbled to a seat and collapsed into it. With a bandaged hand, he made a sign of the cross, thanking God that someone out there was looking out for him. Gabriel walked to the front of the plane where Forsyth looked over, smiling. “Great to see you again, Gabriel; it’s always a pleasure to see you. We always have such pleasant times, don't we? My only complaint is you’re such a boring guy.”
Gabriel nodded his head. “Yes, we have the best of times.”
Forsyth dropped his smile as they accelerated down the makeshift runway for takeoff. “I was being sarcastic, Gabriel. You fucking owe me like you will probably never be able to imagine. But you know I’d do anything for you CIA boys, right?”
“Well, to tell you the truth I retired today. I will no longer be sent into places of death to kill those that are worse. Someone else can go in and take care of people like that. The reason they don’t want to just drop a fucking bomb is that they are too damn scared of pissing off politicians or letting people know that America doesn’t agree with how they are treating their citizens. No, they’d rather try and keep things looking civilized and be able to blame the killings on the people revolting against those that have done wrong.”
“So, you looking for a job then?”
Gabriel sat back, closing his eyes for the first time in days. “No, I think that I’m going to take a little vacation first and then after that, yes, I might need to get a job or two lined up. I can assume that my credentials will be plenty enough to get me set up, right?”
Forsyth pulled a cigar and handed one to Gabriel. He lit a wood match and rolled the cigar until the end glowed. “You know you're going to need someone in the beginning to help you get going.”
Gabriel nodded his head. “Yeah, I can see that being necessary. You have time to do your flight duties and be a handler?”
Forsyth took a pull off of the cigar and said, “Well, I can assure you safe passage from one country to another because of my own particular skill set, which may enough for you to consider me. I know that I can sell the shit out of a highly trained ex-spook who has got more kills under his belt than the bird flu. I got to ask you one question, though.”
Gabriel, who was near sleep, said, “What’s that?”
“How the hell did you ever get into this line of work?”
Gabriel looked over and said, “I don’t like those who hurt others.”
He took off his weapons, setting them on the ground and pulled off his sweat-soaked fatigue jacket. He reclined his seat, thinking of his past and not wanting to thank Forsyth for the unpleasant dreams he was about to have.
Chapter 2
History
May 13, 2013
Jacob sat in the massive lecture hall. A bald instructor, who had the tone of James Earl Jones, stood before the class waving his fist around with conviction. He taught as if he was preaching to the group. Jacob had already read the textbook before enrolling in the class, but was fascinated with the different approaches that the author, who was the man standing before them, took. He also was required to take the class as part of his degree. He could have tested out, but did not want to only because of the compelling teachings of the man.
Jacob had his smart phone by his side and tried multiple times to watch the Chicago Marathon results as they were about to come in. He swore every time he hit the reload button to try and regain signal strength, but it only advised there was no service available. He envied his sister and mother for having the ability to be there today. Jacob rubbed at his leg; he’d had minor microscopic surgery a few months ago and was still healing. He would have been there cheering them on, sitting next to his father at the finish line, had it not been for the scheduled tests later this week.
Jacob’s sister, Jane, was ranked to be in the top twenty finishers. He thought of his sister and how she was made for the sport. Jacob was six foot one and he felt like the runt of the family. He watched the clock on the wall, unable to focus on the lesson of the day. He knew that had he been smarter, he wouldn’t have even wasted his time coming to the class today. There was a lesson going on in front of him, but his head was hundreds of miles away. When the clock struck 1 p.m., Professor Logan wrapped up his speech and dismissed the class. His professor smiled at him as he went past. “Mr. August, that paper was very impressive. If you keep thinking like that, people are going to start publishing your work. You need to put some serious thought into thinking about your future, about the path that you are going to take. You realize that being a teacher’s assistant as a sophomore would be quite impressive on your resume, if and when you apply to medical school.
Jacob questioned, “Medical school?”
The teacher nodded, clasping his fingers together and resting them on his thighs. “You and I both know that you could help people; you are too damn smart to do anything else.”
“I haven’t decided that far into the future yet. I can tell you, though, that your book really opened my eyes when I read it last semester. It really puts things into perspective.”
The professor could only shake his head, smiling yet somehow not surprised. “You do realize that the class is only on chapter ten, right? You put them all to shame, Jacob.”
Jacob shrugged. “I can’t put a good book down, sir; it just kind of sticks when I read it. I’d like to talk more about that teaching assistant job sometime, but I need to go, sir. My mom and older sister are both runners today in Chicago. I think that my sister is going to place in the top ten this year, if not win the damn thing; she’s amazing.”
“Well, s
on, I don’t think that she is the only one in your family that is amazing. I hope they do great today. That is quite an accomplishment to be had. It’s too bad that you couldn’t have made it there, but I think that you are doing the right thing. You’re keeping your studies up, and even with the knee, you would have been tempted to try to compete, anyway. Although it probably wouldn’t have killed you if you had taken a day off from studying. You do realize that you don’t need to try and graduate in two years, right? I’ve heard a lot of kids nowadays use the whole four years to complete a bachelor’s degree.”
Jacob shrugged, smiling playfully. “Yeah, that’s what my dad keeps telling me. Of course, then he thinks of the idea that I can get the degree early, and he’ll have a hundred thousand dollars less in student loans. He gets the biggest smile on his face.”
“Well, now I think that you’re just full of shit. Between your own running and academics, your family has yet to see a dollar in student loans.”
“Yeah, well I like that version of the story better. I really gotta get going, though. Have a good rest of your day, sir.”
“Tell your mom and sister that I said congratulations to the both of them.”
Jacob nodded his head, trying to not be rude rushing out the door, but when he walked outside he felt the bad vibe coming from everywhere around him. Students were rushing, looking worried, through the halls of the building. He walked out into the courtyard, where he finally was able to get reception on his phone. He knew before he got it to work, that somewhere, something was horribly wrong. Jacob walked, not paying attention to anyone. He felt like he was in a tunnel and everything on the outside of his phone was blurry to him.
“Jacob… Jacob, are you reading the news? Have you heard from your family? Oh my god, I hope that you’re okay! Jesus, I hope that they’re okay!”
