by Ty Patterson
‘I have dined with presidents, met the Pope, romanced the most beautiful women in the world, but I have, I had, only one brother. Major Zebadiah Carter.’
A pin-drop silence and then a roar of applause washes over all of them. Connor notices that there is hardly a dry eye in the room, including his.
Much later, when they have sampled the hors d’oeuvres and Rory has spent time with Broker, Roger and Bwana, they make their way toward Cassandra, who is holding court in front of a long table.
The table has his ribbons and medals laid out: Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, a Medal of Honor – the stories behind the medals; a silver tankard, which Broker tells him is the Wimbledon Cup for long-range rifle shooting; and various commendations and certificates. At the other end of the table are a few photographs, Anne and Lauren gravitating toward them.
Mark, Connor and Rory look over the awards, reading the stories behind them, and move slowly to the photographs. He notices a curious stillness in the women, breaks off from the medals, and joins them.
There aren’t many photographs. Just a few faded ones of Zeb when he was serving, a couple of them in either Afghanistan or Iraq or some dusty, sun-bathed land.
What has captured the women is a photograph in the center.
A clean-shaven, dark-haired handsome man, smiling, holds a beautiful woman in his arms, both of them clasping a young boy – one of those pictures that arrests anyone by its vitality and grace.
Cassandra, her voice sounding far away, explains, ‘He didn’t tell anyone. Even here, less than a handful know – Broker, Bear, Chloe, one or two others, but no one else. He and his family were captured by terrorists when he was between assignments. His wife and son were tortured and killed in front of him. He couldn’t do anything to help them.’
Chapter 20
He places the walnut stock of the M40 against his cheek, feels its familiarity settle in his hands, and sights down the rifle. The closed window of the apartment in a towering block opposite the street jumps out at him through his Leupold scope.
Broker and he have come to Rio hunting for Quink Jones, the last of the Rogue Six. He hasn’t been that easy to locate.
* * *
Broker was able to trace him fleeing to Europe when Zeb took down Mendes, first touchdown at Amsterdam and then in Zurich, and after that the trail went cold. He had cajoled his databases, hacked into the most secure NSA systems, Interpol, everything that he could hack into, and still no sign of Jones. It was clear that Jones had realized the Rogue Six had a short shelf life and had decided to put some distance between Holt and himself.
However, no one could disappear like that, and his vanishing act gnawed away at Broker. Over a drink with Roger and Bwana, Bwana had joked, ‘It’s as if the critter has a new life,’ and Broker had stared at him.
‘Of course, that’s it. The one thing Switzerland has, other than banks, is cosmetic surgeons. Jones has a new face and new identity.’
After that it wasn’t that difficult for Broker.
Cosmetic surgeons in Switzerland who provided this service to terrorists, dictators, and assassins were not exactly thick on the ground. Armed with a reference from Clare, who was more than happy to make the hunt an agency one, the three of them had visited six clinics in Switzerland and at the last one had picked up the trail again.
Jones, with a new face and identity, had been renting an apartment in Copacabana, on Rua Paula Freitas, in a high-rise, the last few months. He had been leading a paranoid’s life, seldom venturing from his apartment, and when he did, he moved erratically, seemingly without any plan – deliberately.
Broker and Bwana had spent a couple of weeks surveilling him and had then rented the apartment in the opposite high-rise, a little higher than Jones’s but having a great view of his window.
The long gun was the easiest to get.
Broker’s contacts in Rio had delivered an M40, with a sleek, warm walnut finish that felt as if it belonged in Bwana’s hands. A few days shooting and zeroing and they were good to go.
* * *
He has one shot at Jones, a window of opportunity of a minute at the most, when the target wakes up in the morning, pulls wide the curtains of his glass window overlooking the street twenty floors below, and spends exactly fifty seconds surveying the street.
This is the one thing he does regularly as clockwork every day in the otherwise unpredictable life he leads.
That window of opportunity is enough.
Bwana has taken more difficult shots than this, in more hostile environments than Rio de Janeiro. There was the one in Iraq where he had to take out a Taliban insurgent and had less than thirty seconds when the insurgent rolled down the window of his car to get some fresh air.
Zeb had been with him in Iraq.
The rifle is mounted on a tripod on a flatbed, well inside the apartment so that the muzzle flash will be undetectable from the outside or opposite.
He stops his mind from wandering, the clock running down in his head. He breathes deeply, slowing down his pulse, slows down his breathing, and makes life fade.
At exactly ten to eight in the morning, the curtains opposite and below are pulled open, and Jones’s skinny frame fills the window and his scope.
Bwana waits two seconds to reconfirm the identity, and on the third second he sends the 7.62X51mm NATO round on its mission and sees Jones’s head taken apart a couple of seconds later. As the body staggers back, he sends another two rounds through the center mass just to be sure.
He disassembles the rifle swiftly, yet unhurriedly, places it in a custom-made guitar case, wipes out all traces of his existence in the empty apartment, locks it behind him, and takes the elevator down.
At street level, he becomes one with the early morning rush, many heading to the beach, even at this hour.
Broker is smoking a cheroot, watching Brazilian ass go by, smartly dressed as usual, leaning against an anonymous saloon, when Bwana walks up to him.
‘Grade A,’ he says, waving the cheroot, and Bwana knows he isn’t referring to the cheroot.
Bwana grins, nods at Broker’s unasked question, stows the guitar case away in the trunk, and they set off.
Broker takes a long detour that takes them to the seediest parts of the city, their destination being an illegal steel mill that reduces the rifle to scrap metal and the guitar case to ash.
It is evening by the time they reach GIG airport, return their car, and complete the formalities.
Broker looks a long time at Bwana, an oasis of stillness surrounding them amidst the hustle of the airport, knowing they will meet again, their paths will cross, and hugs him long.
Bwana, ex-Special Forces, brother in arms to Major Zebadiah Carter, Roger, Bear, Chloe, and Broker, walks away to Departures.
Bwana Kayembe, a warrior born in Luvungi.
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The Reluctant Warrior
by
Ty Patterson
Copyright © 2014 by Ty Patterson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Acknowledgements
No book is a single person’s product. I am priv
ileged that The Reluctant Warrior has benefited from the inputs of several great people.
Christine Terrell, Jean Coldwell, and Kathryn Moody for their awesome constructive critique, Donna Rich for her proofreading, Pauline Nolet (http://www.paulinenolet.com) for her proofreading and editing.
Dedications
To my wife, who is my anchor and my sail; my son, who is my inspiration; my parents who never stopped giving; and all my beta readers and well-wishers.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Dedications
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part 3
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part 1
Chapter 1
The boy woke up as soon as he heard his father stirring, and peered out from under the edge of his blanket.
He saw his dad do his usual routine of looking across the small bedroom, from his bed to the children’s beds to see if they were awake, and then step cautiously to the window overlooking the street and scan it.
His father had been doing this for the last few months. One day he had asked his father what he was looking for. He had been brushed off.
They had moved to Brownsville not long ago, just over a year back. For him life had been long periods of moving about followed by short periods of stay and calm, and so far Brownsville had been one of those short periods of calm. He looked across at his sister sprawled across the edge of her tiny bed, legs twitching spasmodically in response to some dream in her eight-year-old mind. He wondered if she enjoyed moving so much; maybe for her it was normal, since she hadn’t experienced anything else. His eyes went back to his father, still standing at the window, and wondered what he was thinking about. The boy gave up wondering after some time as sleep dragged him into oblivion.
Shattner knew his son had been awake and watching, from the changed timbre of his breathing. The apartment was just a single-bedroom apartment in Brownsville, a New York neighborhood well-known for its crime.
William Shattner was a loser and looked like one. His thin brown hair, narrow face, angular body, shifty eyes and hesitant manner didn’t inspire any confidence.
His father ran the only grocery store in a small town in Ohio, and by the time young William turned fifteen, Shattner Senior had realized the family’s livelihood couldn’t be entrusted to his son.
William didn’t want to run a grocery store. He didn’t know what he wanted to do in life. He had a vague idea about seeing places and doing the kind of exciting stuff girls fell for, but those were hazy ideas in his mind that never got translated into ambition. He had his eureka moment when he saw an army recruitment advertisement on TV and enlisted on his eighteenth birthday. His parents, both in poor health by then, wished him well and were secretly glad that they were no longer responsible for him.
The army shaped Shattner to some extent, but it too realized the extent of his capabilities. He had an ability to repair broken equipment and also had a liking for record keeping, and this got him a career in the Ordnance Corps. His vague dreams of seeing places materialized when the corps deployed him to various hot spots of the world.
A slightly more mature Shattner married his high school sweetheart, Coralyn, when he came home on leave. Marriage didn’t turn out the way it was promoted. Coralyn had more aspirations than Shattner and demanded a lifestyle that Shattner couldn’t afford. Not on a sergeant’s income.
His two kids, Lisa and Shawn, were the best things to have happened to him, and in order to give them a comfortable life, Shattner found the means to support Coralyn’s demands.
He started selling military weapons in the black market.
He didn’t know how and when he crossed that moral divide; Shattner wasn’t given to introspection, but he found that the illegal activity came easy to him, and for a while his life was back to as normal as it ever was.
Till the time he was found, court-martialed and discharged from the army.
His marriage had ended by then, and Shattner, using all his meager savings, fought for and got custody of his children. Then followed years of drifting from job to job, living out of run-down apartments, and trying to earn enough to raise his children. Those jobs often involved selling small firearms on the black market – a life on the dark side, the only open door for Shattner.
When the faint possibility of redemption arrived, Shattner grabbed it.
Shattner stood in the shadows and watched life pass in the street. It had become second nature for him for as long as he could remember, to look out for anything out of the ordinary on the street before he stepped out. Nothing struck him, and he headed towards the door of the apartment.
His son would wake up, make breakfast for his sister and himself, get both of them ready for school, and then the two of them would walk a couple of blocks to school. After school, his son would collect his sister and do the routine in reverse. By the time Shattner returned from work, his son and daughter would have finished their dinner and be ready for bed.
His son, a mature adult in an eleven-year-old body, had never experienced boyhood and had never enjoyed all the small things that childhood was about. For the briefest moment, the darkness of despair flooded his mind before he ruthlessly shunted it aside.
Shattner walked several blocks to the car repair shop where he worked. He could have taken a bus to the garage, but he preferred the walk, even if it was a long one, since it gave him the freedom to breathe.
On returning home he picked up a tail.
A short stocky man was trailing him from a distance. He was good, but Shattner’s life in the army had left him with vital survival skills, and he picked up the tail immediately. He sat down on a bench, bought some nuts and ate them leisurely, taking the time to subtly observe the reaction of the tail and also to think the situation through.
The tail hung well back, and finishing his nuts, Shattner decided to do nothing about him. Those who employed the tail already knew where he was living and everything else about him. If he took on the tail, it would only tip them off that he knew. His apartment was on the third floor on Blake Avenue in an apartment complex that housed many like him for whom hope and a future were alien. He could hear the excitement in Lisa’s voice as she talked with her brother, the voices audible through the thin door of the apartment. He stepped in silently, and the rest of his world fell away.
‘Daddy,’ Lisa squealed as she rushed across the room and jumped into his arms. ‘Shawn helped me with schoolwork.’ Her voice came out muffled as she buried her face in his shoulders.
‘Had dinner, princess?’ He looked over at Shawn questioningly.
Both nodded.
‘How was school, princess?’ he asked her as he went to their small bathroom to shower and change, listening to her momentous day. For an eight-year-old, every day was noteworthy. Shattner allo
wed her voice to wash over him, leaving him refreshed.
He spent an hour with her, telling stories, and as her breathing deepened into sleep, he sat there for a long while, his mind empty, as empty as the future he saw for himself. They will have a better future, he promised himself.
‘Dad?’
Shattner turned from the refrigerator to see Shawn tousled with sleep.
‘Dad, will we ever have a normal life?’
Shattner heard the refrigerator door shut behind him, the soft thud drowned by the beating of his heart as he felt his son’s eyes on him. He took a couple of long strides and crouched down in front of his son.
‘Two to three months at the most, Shawn. And then we’ll live like any other normal family. We’ll celebrate birthdays, go on holidays, and have loads of friends… trust me, buddy. Okay?’
Shawn nodded, his eyes dark, the faintest sheen of tears in them.
Shattner pulled him close, crushed him in a hug, and walked him to bed and sat beside him till sleep claimed him.
He checked his phone after dinner and saw the text message silently winking at him.
It was the one he was dreading.
‘Tomorrow.’
Short, terse, like the sender.
He went to his gun cabinet, a grand description for a wooden drawer high up in the closet in the bedroom, and removed his Glock 30 and cleaning materials, and carried them to the drawing room.
He stripped the gun, wiped the parts clean, and then started a more thorough job of lubricating them. The smell of gun oil filled the room, a comforting smell, bringing back good memories. He assembled the gun, loaded its magazine, and chambered a round. He didn’t think he would need the gun the next day, but it never hurt to be prepared.
