By Bruce Carrington
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
The report called me emotionally unstable, reckless, temperamental, violent and impulsive. But it didn’t recommend to remove me from the field.
The list of my reprimands was long, but the culmination of my misbehaviours occurred when I got arrested following a fight I had with the French chargé d’affaires. I shouted some inappropriate ethnic-fuelled slurs, despite my fondness for both him and fried cuisses de grenouille, before beating him up. This was a necessary part of the plan that was meant to finally put me in front of the disciplinary commission. We needed to get one of its members to attend the proceedings.
“Commission is now opening the floor for your statement,” said the chairwoman of the committee. Lacee was a 35-year-old brunette. She was the deputy of Alex, a middle-aged man and an extremely talented intelligence officer back in the day. He, on the other hand, was the deputy director of the Agency. They were irrelevant.
The single person who was not aware that this series of fuckups was just a ruse was Ben, a man in his sixties, whose attire, always immaculate, changed following the death of his son - right around the time I joined the Agency ten years ago. He was now wearing an aged black suit with a contrasting crisp white, but stained in at least three different places, shirt. He was my friend, mentor, and father I never had. To the Agency, he was the traitor whom I was ordered to kill.
I had nothing to say, so the hearing lasted all about 15 minutes, but we sat there for an hour to record such a time in the report. It wouldn’t look serious if we were to write the factual length of the proceedings in the transcript. That’s because the director of the Agency, upon hearing about my adventures, called for disciplinary measures to be taken. We needed to play him too. He was a politically-nominated dimwit whose sole international experience prior to taking up the charge of the most sensitive institution in the country was - and I shit you not - serving as an ambassador to Kuwait. That’s the current state of the espionage world in which, beside few outliers, experienced intelligence officers are being managed by pimple-faced cousins or sons-in-law of the sitting presidents.
I went to grab a beer with Ben afterwards, to the bar called “Brother Rabbit”. Its name was inspired by African folklore in which Br’er Rabbit was a mischievous trickster who utilised wit, deceit, and manipulation to achieve his goals. You can imagine why it was our favourite.
The joint was a typical-looking sports bar, with a long counter at the right side to the entrance, small tables to the other. It was empty, just an elderly couple sitting in the far corner of the room, minding their own business, drinking tea or something similarly adequate for the early hours of the day.
“Joking aside, I am really worried about you,” said Ben, interrupting our bender over some irrelevant matter. I took the shot of vodka and washed it down with the rest of the beer. I ordered another round for us, despite Ben not even being halfway through his. No shots for him.
“Where have you been lately? I needed to beat the shit out of some frog-eater to finally get you out of your hole you crawled into?” I bounced the question. He didn’t respond, and we sat there in silence.
The third beer and shot arrived, just in time to soothe my shaky hand. I wasn’t sure if he noticed yet. While I was perceptive, Ben had a sixth sense. I guess all of us working in the industry had it. It can be a gift or a curse. Ben always said that the sixth sense is a controlled paranoia. Some controlled it well, some didn’t. He mastered it. That’s why he was the best of us, and I didn't think so only because he mentored me and I adored him. He was widely recognised as the most talented in the Agency.
He took me under his wing during my time in “The Academy” - a cute little name for training facility where we were schooled on the subjects relating to clandestine business.
I was a troubled young man but outperformed my peers. He noticed me while reading through the files of the newest recruits and their performance assessments during the training courses. I stood out in all the wrong ways, just like him thirty years before me. It’s not that I couldn’t perform the tasks; it’s that I performed them in a manner that wasn’t to the instructors’ liking.
I was officially thrown out of the course due to insubordination and my name was struck out of any records, but I continued to learn about the craft under exclusive tutelage of Ben.
My first station was in Baghdad, which was supposed to be a transit point before my final destination - Moscow. I was to create my cover story in Iraq and make contact with the small circle of Chechen fighters who moved to the Middle East to support their Muslim brothers in the fight against western invaders. From Chechens in Iraq, I was to gradually infiltrate the baddies financing their presence there - the Chechen mafia. The next point on the agenda involved buying my way into their competition, the Russian mob.
Selling out the information on Chechens would never be enough, and so to prove my intentions were true, Ben and I expected that Ruskis would order me to take out a couple of their business adversaries. I didn’t mind. Ben always emphasised the insignificance of collateral damage when working towards the bigger goal, but it wouldn’t be until years later in that obscure bar he was about to die in, that I would receive the final lesson on the topic.
It was in Baghdad where I first fell in love. Layla was a local humanitarian aide and the most beautiful and kind-hearted woman I have ever met. She got pregnant shortly after our first date. Our daughter, Sara, was born during my first trip to Russia. I hadn’t seen her for the first three years of her life, but when I finally did, I became blind with an unconditional love I have never ever experienced.
For now, Ben and I were recalling my times in The Academy and talking shit about its’ instructors when he summarised his opinion on the matter.
“Fuck them. That’s why we took them out of the field,” he said concluding our little memory trip. “I want you to know that I’m proud of you.”
“Fuck you,” I mumbled, getting over the nostalgia.
He turned towards me and looked deep into my eyes. This little show I’ve put together was about to come to an end.
“This will change you.” - Ben said, opening the catharsis’ doors - “The torment will make you ruthless. You’ll become rageful and heartless. You mustn’t let go of that feeling. The anger will sharpen your senses. Hatred will make you fearless. This world we chose is cold and dirty. It’s cruel. It’s so fucking ugly. Remove your heart from the equation, and you’ll do what needs to be done.” He finished, clearing all the remaining doubts I had about whether he knew why we were here.
I instructed the bartender to leave. He worked for the Agency. Lacee insisted on his presence and I didn’t have the energy to tell her that Ben and I knew all employees of the bar. The junior officer put down the beer glass he was polishing unenthusiastically and gestured to the elderly couple. They stood up and went with him to the backroom. I should have expected that she’ll place more of the Agency’s guys inside and not tell me.
I reached into the inner pocket of my jacket and put the syringe on the table. The charade was over.
“I will not make it easier for you,” he said before finally downing his beer in three big gulps. I knew that he wouldn’t do it himself. Still, there was a part of me that hoped he’ll pick up the syringe and insert it into his neck. I hid my face in the palm of my hand.
“Why, Ben? Why would you do something so fucking stupid?” I said with a mix of sadness and anger.
He grabbed me by the neck and whispered in my ear.
“They had you ever since Lagos happened.” He didn't refer to a place, but an event.
I looked in his direction. My eyes were open, but all I saw was black. I started to sweat, my body froze, and my mind became numb.
Now it was him who reached into his jacket and pulled out a single surveillance photo, showing me exiting a hotel, female purse in my hand, big red X on my face. He took down another, and two more after that. I knew what was on them, and I turned them around without looking before hiding them in my jacket.
It was right after I did my first contract killing for the Russians, all according to the plan we put together with Ben, when I received a message from Layla, telling me that Sara contracted pneumonia. I immediately contacted Ben, breaking all the safety protocols of no-contact, to arrange for them to fly out of Iraq and get Sara the medical attention she needed. He met her once and adored her so he got to work but it was too late. I wasn’t around at the time of Layla’s grief. I didn’t fly-in for Sara’s funeral. I entered the state of utter numbness and detachment. The last message I received from Layla detailed Sara’s funeral and location of her resting place. We haven’t spoken since.
I left the Agency and started doing contract work in Africa which is a pompous way of saying I became a mercenary-whore for hire. I started to drink heavily during that time. For a full year I was either blackout drunk or in a firefight, there was no in-between.
It was in one of Lagos’ hotel bars that I met a woman. We talked for a bit, got drunk, and went up to her room.
I sobered up after we finished. That’s when I noticed her purse, placed at the desk opposite to the bed. I stood up, walked across the room and picked it up. It had what appeared to be two buttons. One was a mini camera that I recognised immediately. I turned around and noticed her, still in bed, looking at me with terror in her eyes.
The Russians, who were waiting in the surveillance van across the street, took pictures of me exiting the hotel with their honey trap’s purse. They ran inside, took the pictures of the dead body laying on the bed and started an exhausting process of determining how best to use them.
I was approached by Lacee two months later. They found out that Ben was selling state secrets to the Russians and got four of our officers killed. I kept up the facade, pretending I’m out of the game while secretly gathering the evidence of his betrayal. It wasn’t hard. It was now clear to me why.
They had no leverage on me. I had nothing left. They knew that I’d sooner put the bullet in my face rather than work for them. I wanted to do it ever since Sara died. I didn’t care about anything or anyone. But Ben did. He lost a son, and his wife passed away from breast cancer shortly after. I was all he had.
“This little show of yours was convincing, I’ll give you that. Now, you have to continue mine.” This was his way of telling me what must be done, but for it to work, Ben needed to die.
I suddenly realised that my brief yet disastrous crisis costed the lives of four people. He was ruthless and expected the same from me. I know I was worth more than four officers in his eyes. Collateral damage. He sacrificed them and expected me to keep up the appearance of a bitter drunk, reach out to the Russians, and offer myself, furious over what happened to my beloved mentor.
“Have you ever visited her?” He was telling me where to start.
The bar was empty now. There were no hidden cameras, but we were still being listened to. I stood up and walked around the counter to pour us one last shot. I grabbed the syringe and squirted its contents into his glass. He smiled, we toasted, and we drank the vodkas.
Two weeks after, I went to visit Sara and discovered a pendrive dropped into one of the vases placed on her grave. I would later find out that it contained a list of Ben’s handlers along with their psychological assessments, relationships’ summaries, skeletons in their closets, all things necessary to turn the tables at the right time.
I replaced the dried-out flowers with fresh ones, took one last look at the picture of a smiling, beautiful, little girl, turned around, and made my way to the airport. My flight from Baghdad to Moscow was leaving in an hour.
By Bruce Carrington
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
After ten years on the job, it was only natural that I would grab the gun and point it at the door when I heard the soft sound of a clicking lock.
It was early in the morning, and I was already high and drunk, so it took me a while to realize that anyone I anticipated might actually do the deed for me. I lowered the gun but still kept it in my hand in case there were two of them and they needed a bit of encouragement. The sight of me might prove too depressing, and I became afraid that Ruskis-for-hire would decide to just leave me there to die on my own. I wanted them to have second thoughts because I'd like to take one of them with me, provoking the second one to do the job. I wanted to murder someone as much as I wanted to kill myself.
I sat naked on my living room carpet to have easy access to the gun laying on my low willow coffee table while I waited for an impulse to finally use it. But, up until then, I took advantage of the table's proximity to snort the carefully arranged lines of heroin.
I sighed with disappointment when I recognized the woman who entered my living room, despite her face being covered by a silky scarf.
"It's not Iran, Jenny, you don't have to cover your hair here," I hid the gun under the sofa and imagined that she already made quite a commotion on the streets of Baghdad, walking around with her smooth, milky skin and dazzling azure eyes.
Jenny was beautiful, but she wasn't my type. She wasn't brunette, she wasn't tall, and, most importantly, she wasn't married to any of the Agency's higher-ups, whom I disdained. The only "fuck-you" option towards them was to fuck her ever since she became my administrative assistant. This was a single no-no in otherwise relaxed guidelines that the Agency put in place. The company would never be able to control ever-horny individuals risking their lives on a daily basis. That's what the field-work's adrenaline did to you - it made you want to fuck. But still, there were a few rules which I absolutely needed to break. I never felt sorry for making her fall in love with me and thought that it's good to have someone who cares for me.
She took off the scarf and revealed her long, blond hair. They fell on her large breasts, which contrasted with her petite physique.
“Where’d you get that stuff from?” she queried upon noticing the drugs on the table.
"Shishanis forget all about their holy texts after sunset," I said, referring to the Chechens by how they were called locally, “They’re the biggest fucking junkies I've ever met.” I finished and lit a ketamine-spiked cigarette I found lying idly by my still exposed genitals. I looked for it for hours the previous night and I had barely moved since then.
Jenny told me how worried she was and that Ben, the only other person who had any knowledge of my situation, discouraged her from contacting me. He had lost his son and wife, so he understood the process of grief better than anyone.
I tried to focus on the cigarette while Jenny kept asking me questions I pretended not to hear. The opium and ketamine weren’t helping because I could still understand her, but I did get introspective for a moment.
Sara, at the height of her fever, asked her mom where I was. Layla wrote that right before she fell into a coma, our beautiful daughter thought that the doctor caring for her was actually me. They played along because it made her not afraid anymore, knowing, that her daddy was close.
I flew to Baghdad two days after her funeral. I stayed at the safe house that only I, Jenny, and Ben had access to. I came here to say my goodbyes. A week had passed, and I was still not able to force myself to go and tell her how sorry I am. To tell her that I should be with her before she went to sleep.
"You haven't even visited her grave, did you?" she wouldn’t be able to say anything more triggering even if she tried.
I jumped to my feet, hurried across the room, and grabbed her by the neck, slamming her head into the corridor's mirror.
"Ask me one more time."
"Let me go."
"Ask the question one more time, you cunt." I glimpsed at the shattered mirror and saw that I was smiling devilishly, teeth out as if ready to bite her beautiful face off.
"You're hurting me," she muttered, determination still on her face.
"Get the fuck out." I let her purpled neck go, turned around, and went to the bathroom, where I leaned against the sink and felt as if I had sobered up. I looked at the mirror and deep into my soulless eyes. There was nothing in them.
I put downward pressure on the sink, breaking the pipe connecting it to the wall, and threw it through the shower doors. I started to punch the cabinet's mirror above the space where the sink was a second ago. I howled like a wounded animal after I was done.
I sat on the toilet's floor, pieces of glass piercing my thighs and ass. By the time Jenny entered, the floor was already red. She carefully walked through the marble and kneeled down, weeping silently.
“Jenny..." she put her silky hands on my cheeks. This was the moment I was supposed to say how sorry I was and thank her for not giving up on me. "I will break your neck if you don’t leave me alone," I raised my head to meet her eyes. All I saw was terror.
| Author Notes |
Above is an expansion of one of the subplots presented in my first short story shared on FS - "Br'er Rabbit".
I decided to expand on the original piece following extremely positive feedback I received from the community and numerous voices encouraging me to do so. |
By Bruce Carrington
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
I sat there, crimson liquid pouring from my ass and thighs. I laughed to myself a couple of times; I think I cried too. It felt like half an hour had passed, but it all occurred within the space of a minute. I sat there, hoping to bleed out, which, now that I think of it, would make a pretty pathetic way to go. I fell into this deep pit of anxiety. As every minute passed, I sobered up more and more, anxiousness rising in parallel to the speed at which my senses came back. I knew what I had to do.
I slowly rose to my feet, pulling out the larger pieces of glass that were stuck in my legs. I grabbed a towel to soak in the blood and pulled on the first pair of jeans I could see lying around. I grabbed the single t-shirt that wasn’t soaked in sweat and made my way out of the apartment.
It was blazingly hot in the streets, which were filled with the smells of grilled pieces of lamb, fried falafel, and gasoline due to the peak hours of the day. I looked around and felt the walls of this anxious pit I was in closing in. I needed to find her and started to think in which direction she had gone.
There was no option that she had booked the place here; she couldn’t know what to expect once she saw me. I acknowledged that if she could, she would have stayed with me. The only rational direction to go was the airport. She would never be able to catch a taxi from here; the closest one would be the taxi corner located 500 meters from my apartment. I turned left and rushed toward it.
It wasn’t hard to spot her long golden hair in the crowd. She was without her scarf now. I saw her in the middle of the road towards the point I rightfully assumed she’d head to. The anxiety left, but only because it was replaced with the rush of adrenaline that was now circulating in my body. My physiology was right in urging me to follow because once I caught up to her, I saw two guys trailing her closely, Jenny blissfully unaware of the danger she was in.
She worked for the Agency but received no clandestine training. The only thing differentiating her from an office assistant was that she had the second-highest security clearance. What the hell was she doing here, I asked myself, knowing damn well that it’s all my fault. I impulsively reached behind my back to where the gun was. Only it wasn’t there. I’d left it in such a rush that I forgot it was still lying under the sofa, on the carpet where I sat a moment ago, did the lines, and drank my consciousness away. Doesn’t matter. I knew how to fight and I could easily deal with two of them.
I was closing in on Jenny and the two buffs when everything went black. The hood was thrown over my head, and I felt two men holding me by my arms. I fought them off, head-butting one of them and kicking another in the balls. The first guy punched me in the spleen, which only indicated that he knew his biology, because it immediately made me fold in two and shut down any further defense mechanism for the time required to throw me inside a van.
I counted the turns and the time it took to arrive at the place where they pulled me out of the truck. I knew that the two men trailing Jenny were a ruse. They were after me all along, and she led them to me unknowingly. I was calm now. She was safe. They had no business with her, only me.
I was thrown onto a chair, and my hood was put up. The lamp across from me blinded my eyes, and I couldn’t see the person sitting across from me, but I could smell the awful scent of Private Blend Düfte Oud Wood by Tom Ford that Ben used to wear. Ford once said that he experimented with combining the smell of vodka and tobacco and that it was a huge failure that he decided not to pursue. I can't imagine why he wouldn't after releasing this mix of rotten rosewood and cardamom.
“You’re burned here. They tracked the call,” he referred to the time I broke the rule of no communication when I first found out about Sara’s disease. I was still in Russia back then. I needed to get her out of Baghdad and into Europe. Ben treated Sara as his own granddaughter, and she loved him too. But he was clear-minded enough to understand the potential implications of this call. He was now telling me that he was right.
“Do I look like I give a fuck?” I burked, my head killing me. “Couldn’t you just knock?” I didn’t get the whole point of the show initially. He gave me a look, and I knew what he'd say. I wasn't in the shape to operate in the field. It was his test, and I failed.
“You’ll get on a plane with me. You’ll go to rehab. We’ll talk once you sober up.” There was nothing else in this world that I hated more than being patronized. I wanted to hurt him, and I knew just the thing to say.
“I’m not your son, Ben. You should’ve said the same thing to him when you had the chance.” He was my age when he died in a car accident. A heavy drinker and addicted to meth.
I know which buttons to push to make people go away. I didn’t burn my bridges. I blew them up. Ben gave me the most sorrowful look and stood up. He processed the grief and his past mistakes. That’s why I still had all my teeth, and my eyes weren’t gouged out, and my tongue was still in place to spit poison. But there was no more poison to spit. I regretted what I said.
“The plane takes off in two hours," he reached into the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and handed me the ticket. "You can choose to come or not, but you must leave this place.” I realized in that moment that no matter how many explosives I plant under that bridge, it will never crumble. This little feeling of appreciation I had was the single clear-minded thing I felt then.
He got up, his guys following. They weren’t from the Agency. No, he could never risk anyone from there knowing about me. They were mercenaries. Black Water, perhaps. I sat there for a moment, contemplating. Not the ticket that lay in front of me. But those four guys. Their occupation, to be more precise. I was tired of the espionage business and wanted a more straightforward line of work. I couldn’t keep up like this any longer. I was too young to die from an overdose. There was still a time for that.
I couldn’t go back home. It wasn’t safe for me to be in the city, especially now after Ben admitted that I’m in the crosshairs. I made my way to the local opium den. The “Cafe” as locals referred to it, was run by a local smuggler, information broker, and human trafficker.
“Salam, Abbas,” I said, entering the smoke-filled warehouse where the den was operating from. The air smelled earthy, sweet yet bitter.
“Wa Alaikum Salam,” the middle-aged man, resembling the last Shah of Iran, leaned over respectfully and navigated through the labyrinth of cots seating unconscious men, shisha-like pipes dangling from their relaxed hands. His step was light as if he floated through the spicy air.
The only conscious people inside the warehouse were seven men, floating around the beds, holding bowls filled with cold water and towels around their shoulders. They monitored the blissful crowd and were there to soothe their feverish states with wet and cool cloths. It was an all-inclusive establishment, and there was nothing more I wanted than to just lie there for a moment and forget.
“I need the current contact info for that guy from Cape Town,” I said, paying no attention to whether we had been eavesdropped on or not.
“He operates from Manila now.”
“But he’s from Cape Town.”
“Yes.”
“So I need the current contact info for that guy from Cape Town, who operates from Manila now.” I met Abbas in that holy state of mind after the smoke circulating in the air entered and soothed my brain.
“He’s in Rio now. Underground.” I didn’t mind how confusing this conversation had gotten. All I wanted was to dissolve in the air, lie in bed, and get a fix. But I knew I couldn’t.
“He’s dead?”
“No, he just hides in Rio now. But it might as well be anywhere in South America.”
“I don’t care where he is, Abbas,” I said exhaling and trying to come to my senses. “All I need is the contact for either him or some of his mercenaries operating in Africa.”
“Come to my office. I’ll…” He paused and looked deep into my eyes, but his eyes were empty, and I felt as if mine were too. “What?”
“What?” I was getting higher and higher, and I wanted to lie down.
“You’ll need the passage too?” He was right. I needed the passage out of Baghdad that wouldn't be put on any records. I nodded.
“There’s the guy in Somalia I can hook you up with,” he said, his head light but his eyes sharper all of a sudden. “Do you want to lie down for a bit?”
“No,” I said, fighting every ounce of myself, feeling extremely proud of my assertiveness.
“My ship leaves in seven hours. You should get some rest, sadiqi.”
“Okay,” I fought, and I lost. My ship leaves in seven hours, after all. And I needed to sleep. I will never come back to this place in my life. I will go, and I will forget about everything that has happened here.
| Author Notes | Continuation of the "Opium & Love" story acting as an expansion of the "Br'er Rabbit" plot. |
By Bruce Carrington
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
A year had passed since I moved to Africa, following the fuck-up I committed back in Baghdad. The guy I had started working for dealt in weapons and drugs. His prime source of income came from dealing in North Korean meth - yes, that’s right, North Korean meth. The product they made in their state-sponsored labs was characterized by the highest quality and purity worldwide. It was smuggled through the Chinese borders where the Triads sold it in bulk to the Fox, or as we called him, the Fat Man.
The Fox had been responsible for co-creating one of the first deep-web Amazons for drugs. Unsatisfied with the low-levels of adrenaline from sitting behind his computer in his grandparents’ basement, he had begun to pursue other ventures. Two of these - weapons and human trafficking - had resulted in him moving from the quiet neighborhood of Cape Town to the lawless outskirts of Manila - a fact I learned from Abbas when he organized my transport to meet the Fat Man’s guy operating in Somalia.
Eli, a stick-resembling man, was in his early forties. The mental strain put on him by his boss was evident in the white set of hair and numerous cracks in his forehead, which made him look twenty years older than he actually was. He carried himself like an English gentleman, but due to the environment he operated in, wore only light shirts and cargo shorts, both always neatly pressed and cleaned. He had soft hands, a delicate indication of his civilian background, in contrast to the vast majority of guys working for the Fat Man.
Eli spoke quickly and was constantly stressed about something, but it didn’t stop him from making deals with the locals, famous for their particular fondness for privateering.
Somali pirates were another product of Western fucking civilisation interfering and putting their capitalist dick where it didn’t belong. To prevent foreign fishing boats from stealing from their tuna-rich waters, Somalis began hijacking them. Soon, they realized they could make more money by kidnapping ships and holding people for ransom than they ever could through tuna fishing and trade. Enter Fat Man, a guy in desperate need of a safe haven.
Eli was well-respected by the buffs reporting to him. He let the mercenaries do the heavy-lifting on their own terms, while he managed the intellectual side of the operation in Somalia. This was the kind of guy you couldn’t possibly dislike. Eli was loved by the locals too. He would often go out of his way to assist those we worked with and arrange for a delivery of medications for their sick children or spouses.
He had to hide such expenditures, though. The Fat Man kept close tabs on even the smallest of expenses. Eli wouldn’t have survived so long if not for his excellent accounting skills and habit of keeping every receipt.
Eli and the Fat Man met on a quarterly basis, and this time around, the big boss was finally allowed to travel to meet his protege in Cape Town after nearly a four-month-long stay in Rio, where he hid because of some heat, the details of which I wasn't aware. I did know, however, that he wanted to meet the guy he had heard so much about since I first started working with Eli.
I’d started on the muscle-side of the business, scaring away the local terrorist groups that were unhappy with the local populace engaging in business dealings with foreigners, but my other talents soon came into play. Eli was good at accounting, but he wasn’t good at moving the money without raising the red flags. I had advised him on a couple of transactions, and I knew that he suspected that my introduction as a former French Foreign Legion Corporal was a lie.
We had been sitting in Eli’s rented car, parked in front of the Silo Hotel - one of Cape Town’s most luxurious hotels - when he told me about the true reason behind my presence here. I was to do a job directly for Fat Man. He had briefed me on the details. I listened carefully before exiting the car to meet my employer.
"Nice to finally meet you," he said, extending his fat hand. I imagined it had been smeared in grease from the whole chicken he'd obliterated before meeting me outside the hotel’s poolside.
"Likewise." I shook his hand and grinned, not in a smile, but at the sad realization that I was right. It was disgusting.
"Eli spoke very highly of you. I understand he brought you up to speed?"
"He did."
"Good." He closed one of his nostrils and aggressively blew his nose onto the ground. As if that wasn't revolting enough, he proceeded to wipe the remaining slime that dangled from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. — "You'll go with Dave." I turned my head to see the comic-book character standing beside Fat Man. He was as wide as a piano with a small, coconut-sized head seemingly glued to his chest - the guy had no neck.
Dave was the seasoned team leader of the mercenaries working for Fat Man, to whom he reported to. He was nearing his forties, former Green Beret who transitioned to the private sector following his dishonourable discharge from the Special Forces. His staff-sergeant found him raping an underage Afghani girl during the War on Terror. Similarly to the rest of the guys under him, he kept taking up jobs characterized by raising degrees of degeneracy until he finally made it to the top - the Fat Man. I didn’t know his backstory yet, but more importantly, I didn’t know that he was a complete, text-book definition of a psychopath. I would find out about the latter soon enough.
Dave didn't utter a word. He just stared at me, trying to figure me out. I looked him straight in the eyes before moving them to the Fat Man, who continued making sounds with his pig lips.
“The intel that we got is that there are five of those guys in total.” I imagined him reading cheap spy novels, noting down the cool words that he could use during conversations such as this.
The additional four guys were a new piece of information that Eli didn't provide. There was supposed to be just one guy, inside the single-story house, from whom we were to get the information. He allegedly stole from the Fat Man, and we were to make him tell us where the money was. I say "allegedly", because Eli briefed me on his paranoid character, which more often than not, produced fake scenarios based on abstract thoughts.
“Do you have any questions, mate?”
“No.” The smell of his sweat penetrated the expensive perfume he wore, and I wanted to get this conversation over with.
“Okay. Break a leg, boys,” the sadistic barrel-man chuckled and rolled back to the hotel’s restaurant.
Dave and I got inside the pickup truck, and he handed me a loaded 9mm gun with a silencer already on it. I checked, and I was right in assuming that he’d pass it to me with the disengaged safety catch as a test. I engaged it, ensuring no accidental discharge to his coconut face. I checked the empty barrel, then proceeded to inspect the silencer. It was loosely attached, so I screwed it on tightly and moved to check the magazine before properly seating it in the gun's grip.
He side-eyed me closely throughout the process, and I could feel him nodding his head upon completion of the basic gun handling check. He mentally noted that I knew what I was doing, and I noted that he was an unsubtle fuckface.
“The rounds are subsonic,” he said, referring to the bullets designed to travel below the speed of sound, which means they don't produce the supersonic shockwave—the big bang—which occurs even when the suppressor is on.
“It won’t matter inside.” Even with the suppressor on, the sound of subsonic bullets will still produce the characteristic “click” that the target’s bodyguards will recognize immediately.
“It’s only precaution. Here.” He handed me the military-issued karambit knife. It was short and curved, with a ring for your finger placed at the butt of the grip. It resembled a tiger claw and was initially designed in Southeast Asia for agricultural purposes, not close combat or throat slashing.
The house was located at the road junction. The guy had uninstalled all the cameras inside due to his fear of the Fat Man’s hacking skills. And rightfully so. Six live cameras were placed at each corner of the house, above the front doors, and in the pool garden. Getting inside was the hardest part if you disregarded the four security guys on constant alert and a single paranoid junkie with a price on his head.
Dave instructed me to enter the premises by jumping through one particular fence that led straight to the garden. I'd be visible to the camera, but if I were fast enough, it would be impossible to notice me since Fat Man would turn the one pointing in my direction once he saw me in the frame. A 2-second cut shouldn't alert the guy sitting behind the monitors, and I would be in the clear.
“I’m in touch with the Fox. He’s got the live feed and will tell me when it’s fine to start.” This was another information I wasn't aware of, and I immediately reassessed the situation. Fat Fuck, obviously, couldn't turn them off because it would result in a total lockdown of the house we were breaking into. The issue here was that he would have the video documentation of me murdering the guards if the fight moved to anywhere but inside.
“Let me guess, he told you to get rid of the guy in the garden, didn’t he?” I turned my whole body towards Dave, feeling the rage building up inside of me.
“How’d you know?” I rolled my eyes at his response and thought about what a dumb fuck he was.
We still had a bit of the road ahead of us, and I got lost in thought, contemplating my predicament. I had been working for them for a year now, and this was my rite of passage. It wasn’t so much just a test but a selection. Eli had told me about the changes coming to Fat Man’s organization and that he was looking to move some guys around and consolidate responsibilities that, up to this point, were chaotically allocated. Until then, I had worked for Eli, assigned to him as his personal muscle. But I had proven myself more than a protective chunky monkey, news of which had reached his boss.
He needed more Elises and fewer Daves. But he still needed both. If he could have a guy with the intelligence of the first one and tactical skills of the second, he wouldn’t have to rely so much on either one of them. I would jump in and temporarily cover the work of each before a full-time replacement was found. That was, in case his evidently schizophrenic mind produced voices urging him to kill one of them. Should I do the job as per Dave’s instructions, I’d prove that I was only a brainless gun, unable to do anything besides killing. His confirmation of the Fat Man’s little live-streaming entertainment was the subtle signal of whether he could put a leash around my neck before he kicked me back in line where the rest of the dogs were.
We were moving slowly through one of the seven richest neighborhoods of Cape Town, called Bishopscourt. The road was lined with big Monterey Pine trees on both sides, hiding the street from Africa's raging sun. Green forest mountains showed themselves in the spaces where the trees didn’t meet. The air felt fresh and salty, the wind was strong, signalling an upcoming storm. If I knew how to surf, I’d use the 9mm subsonic bullet and put it through Dave’s head and go and do just that. The weather was perfect for riding the waves, I thought. I imagined the tides getting higher and higher with every passing minute.
“Oh, and one last thing,” he said, stopping the car diagonally across the street from the villa and jolting me from my contemplation. "You’ll be going in alone.”
I put on the earpiece he had handed me earlier, his full attention on me now, looking for any sign of surprise or discontent.
“Ping you once the house’s secured.” I got out, leaving him dumbfounded and unaware that my lack of surfing skills was the single thing that made him survive the day.
| Author Notes | Continuation of Br'er Rabbit storyline. |
By Bruce Carrington
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
I was making my way towards the house, discretely looking around and ensuring I wasn't caught by any of the neighboring villa cameras, when I suddenly saw a food courier opening his delivery container mounted on his scooter. He took out two big bags with food that dominated the fresh coastal air and filled it with the beautiful smell of Indian Nihari - a slow-cooked stew complemented with what I imagined could only be the tenderest pieces of mutton. My stomach tightened and I recalled that I hadn’t eaten for three days. Not because of stress, or anything of the sort. I don’t even know why, actually. I just didn’t. But the empty stomach I was running on made me float three feet above the ground towards the spicy and meaty sauce hidden somewhere in that guy’s box. The courier was buzzed in and disappeared behind the gate.
I flew in when he was making his way through the driveway towards the house. I undid the velcro mounting the backpack-container to the scooter and threw it over my shoulder.
“What the fuck are you doing?” - Dave’s voice sounded in my earpiece, but I ignored it.
I kept moving towards the house, the smell of Nihari still marinating the inside of the backpack and penetrating my nose. The Indian guy that prepared it - it smelled too good to not be prepared by one - didn’t know that the smell of his dish would help me get inside of someone’s house and kill four people.
“What?” The unpleasant voice in the buzzer mumbled after I rang the bell on the target’s house fence.
“Kos delivery!” He buzzed me in, no questions asked. It was just too simple. There were five guys in total in there. One was the boss, three guys were monitoring the premises and the last one hid somewhere in some miniature room constantly watching the cameras' feed, I imagined.
I made my way towards the doors, passing neglected rose-bushes on both sides of the driveway, keeping in mind that there’s a camera that points directly to the house entrance. It was on the right side above the porch, which made me grab the backpack and settle it on my biceps to hide my face from the lens. I opened it and discretely put the gun inside, the smell of mutton punching me in the face and making my eyes wet from wanderlust.
“Hei boet!” I shouted as a hello in my broken Afrikaans as soon as I saw the bodyguard opening the doors. Bald, muscled, tall - like every single fucking security contractor I met in this country. — “Hold the bakkie for me will ya,” I said while forcing the backpack onto his hands when I knew I was outside of the camera frame. Surprised, he grabbed it and I had a moment to take a peek inside of the house. No one in the closest vicinity, only a long corridor leading towards what I assumed was the living room.
I put my right hand inside the backpack and buzzed the ringer placed near the doors with my left, to mask the sound of a short “click” that the subsonic bullet produced. It penetrated the bag and his skull and he dropped to the ground in an instant. I didn’t know if anyone was close enough to hear it but I wanted to be on the safe side, thus the buzzer. Plus, I never shot this gun and knowing the sabotaging nature of Dave I didn’t want to take any chances in case he lied with the type of the bullets he inserted into the magazine. The sound of the normal one, even with the suppressor on, would put everyone in the house on high alert. Dave didn’t lie, though, and the fact that the subsonics were in fact in the magazine presented many more options to me now.
The entrance doors with hydraulic closer shut behind me when I made my way through the long and empty corridor. It led to a spacious and equally bare living room with huge glass sliding doors leading to the garden. There were two guys sitting on a big couch which was the single piece of furniture beside an equally huge plasma TV. They were watching sports and the voice was turned on loud. I looked outside of the glass doors and saw another two baldies, occupied with something, I didn’t see what it was. I didn’t focus, because I realized in that brief moment that Dave had lied to me.
There were supposed to be five in total. None of them was the target who - as Dave shared - had blue-dyed hair which was the single piece of information I worked on, beside the fact that the target was male. I felt the wrath washing over me because I was not sure how many more of them were there in the house.
With one smooth movement and two silent clicks, I ended the soccer match for the two baddies on the couch and quickly looked around. This was a tricky situation and I was unsure where to start. There was a single corridor leading to two rooms - one must have been the office with the bedroom, the second - the camera room? I wasn’t sure where to start until I saw a little tablet placed on the table where two dead bodies were now laying under. I looked at it and saw the camera feed which answered my question.
I made my way across the empty living room, opened the slide doors and shot two remaining guys. One was burning a steak on the grill and the second one was sunbathing. Professionals.
I proceeded to move towards the corridor leading to the two doors that faced each other at the end. I chose the right door first and saw two guys taking a nap on a bunk bed. They were the nightshift, I presumed. Were. I produced two clicks, got out, and kicked the door leading to - what must’ve been - the target’s office. The house was secured and I needed to vent.
The guy with blue hair jumped from behind his desk with his hands up. I didn’t recognize him at first. I quickly glanced around the small room. It was empty, like the rest of the house, just two chairs and a wide wooden table situated opposite to the doors.
My attention was now focused on Tony the Turbot, and I lowered my gun once I recognized his face and clicked the button on the earpiece, disengaging the communication between me and Dave.
He called me by the name I hadn't used since I left the Academy and started to approach me. I put up my gun again and shook my head slightly. Tony was tall and thin. An ideal candidate for every intelligence agency in the world because of how average-looking he was. Two things that differentiated him from the typical look of a 30-year-old Caucasian - beside the hair - were his bulging eyes and large mouth.
“What are you doing here?” He stopped moving and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“I could ask you the same thing, Turbot.” - I said, moving the gun from him towards the desk and back at him.
“Long time no see, I guess, huh?” He took two steps back and returned to where he previously stood. “We were wondering where you ended up after they kicked you out from the Academy.”
“Sit. Hands on the table.” He followed the command, and I sat on the chair opposite to the desk.
“So, when did you start working for the Fat Man?” Turbot asked casually, diverting himself from the gravity of the situation.
“I’m here with Dave. He waits in the car,” I ignored his question and saw as his pupils dilated, his mouth opened slightly. “This can go two ways. You can give me the location of the stash, or I can call Dave, and you’ll tell him.” I monitored his reaction, and every mention of Dave made his face twitch slightly.
“You know what he does, right?”
“I don’t care, Turbot.”
“He’s a fucking psycho.” He leaned towards me from his desk, and I raised my gun slightly to calm him down. — “I sat where you’re sitting now. He uses a fucking wood grinder to carve down your teeth, you get it? I even fucking Googled this shit, man. You know how many fucking nerves are there in the teeth?” He started to cry at that point. — “The last guy fucking shat himself four times in a minute!” His face was red and looked as if it was going to explode. — “And I didn’t even fucking tell you the best part! The guy told him where the fucking money was before he even started, you get it? You get it? Tell me you get it. He’s a fucking psycho, man!”
“What’s with the hair?” I said casually.
He sank in the chair again, defeated, and hid his face in his hands. He paused for a minute to compose himself.
“I always wanted this color, but couldn’t. You can’t play the spy game with blue fucking hair,” he said with a shaky voice.
“Tony,” I put the gun on the table in front of me and leaned towards him. “This house, it’s a company house, isn’t it?” Security contracting firms such as the one he hired offered package deals that included both the safe houses and mercenaries for protection.
“Yes,” he said, showing me his face again, mouth still opened, and a delicate gleam in his eye.
"And I guess it does have the underground tunnel leading to the sewers?"
“Yes,” his eyes were now blazing with light.
“Take a piece of paper, write down the coordinates to the stash,” it was always the coordinates. — “Hide it inside the desk. I will tell Dave that you were not here, we’ll sweep the house, and eventually find the note. Don’t you fucking dare get any ideas, do you understand, Turbot?"
“I understand,” he mumbled humbly with a lowered head, his hopeful eyes still illuminating the room, and I needed to turn the lights down a bit.
“I’m being fucking serious. Call the guys from the burner and tell them to pick you up. You’re getting out of the country. You think of something stupid, and I’ll find you, and it won’t be Dave who’ll grind your fucking teeth.”
Turbot kept thanking me as he produced the note with coordinates before passing it to me.
“Write another, with random numbers.” He paused for a second and did what I asked.
“Another, with the right coordinates this time.”
He produced them quickly, without any hesitation and passed the paper along. The numbers matched with the ones on the first note. I raised the gun and shot him in the head. His face fell on the keyboard of his opened laptop placed in front of him.
I put on my gloves, picked up the three pieces of paper, opened the first desk drawer, pulled out the gun Turbot had hidden inside of it and dropped it by his feet. I opened another and hid the false note between random documents. I walked out of the room and went to the doors opposite to the office, cleaned its handle with my shirt, and clicked the button on my earpiece.
“House’s secured. Buzz the doorbell three times so I know it’s you.” Dave would cover the last of my fingerprints with his own.
The buzzer went off three times shortly after. He walked over the body of the first bodyguard with a big fucking smile on his savage face. I stood at the end of the corridor to meet him. My face was covered with the remains of Turbot’s brain. He smiled even wider when he saw me.
“Target’s dead.”
“Don’t worry. It wasn’t really about the money,” he said as if nothing happened.
He approached me, and I hit him in the solar plexus which took his breath out. He grabbed some piece of his body where his neck was supposed to be before I slammed his head on the wall. He slid on it, and I kicked his nose with my knee. His head didn’t bounce from the wall this time around.
He was on the ground, his head resting inside of the hole it produced. I knelt beside him.
“We’re going to do some math now, Davey,” I said, putting the karambit inside his mouth because it’d taken me too long to find his neck. “How many rounds were in the magazine?”
“Fifteen.”
“You mentioned there were five guys inside. I put a single bullet in each of them. How many bullets are left in the magazine?” I slapped him on the forehead so that he didn’t get any ideas of asking whether I shot the walls for fun.
“Ten,” he mumbled after a pause, not because he could barely breathe or because I slammed his head on the wall.
“Then…” I pressed my face to his, “why the fuck am I left with seven?"
Dave looked at me and gave a big smile, which staggered me.
“You passed,” he said, before starting to laugh maniacally.
I stood and went up the corridor. I grabbed the food container, put it up on my arm again to hide my face, and exited the house.
By Bruce Carrington
It was Tuesday night, the date night, the expensive dinner night.
The night when we would allow ourselves to use cheap wine for the sauce, two teaspoons of truffle oil - the bottle of which we had bought two months back and it still served us till this day because of how sparingly we used it - and some mediocrely-lavish pieces of meat or fish. The night when we would sit by our coffee table with the lights dimmed and nothing playing in the background. No music, no movie, just us.
I picked two skirt steaks that I intended to briefly marinate in soy sauce, four minced cloves of garlic, black pepper that I had freshly ground, dill that I had chopped, salt, a bit of lemon juice, a bit of chili powder, and a single teaspoon of truffle oil before putting them on a blazing hot grilling pan for a minute a side. They would cook themselves to perfection while they rested from the residual heat.
But before I even put them in the pan, I prepared a quick rocket salad. Chopped cherry tomatoes, shaved the remainder of our parmesan that had occupied our fridge for a concerningly long time, freshly squeezed half a lemon, and another teaspoon of truffle oil to finish it off. No balsamic dressing because Lea hated it.
She opened the door to our little apartment in the shadiest of neighborhoods because that was the only place that we could afford. Her lips met mine, and she let me inside. "How’s work?" I asked, seating the backpack at the kitchen counter.
"Ah, you know. Usual. Nothing special," she said while disappearing behind the corner. — "How about yours? Did you stab someone today?"
"I wanted to. I really wanted to." We were now shouting between the rooms, she from somewhere in the living room, me in the kitchen, unpacking the wine and steak I had bought.
"How did the service go?"
"The new commie's such a pain in the ass," I said, preparing all the things necessary for the steak marinade and getting the kitchen in order.
"The douchebag asked me if I had any band-aids because he burned his finger."
"Oh, no."
"Yeah. I told him to tough it out."
"Poor guy."
"Thanks."
"I was talking about him, you ass," I heard her laughing now. She had the cutest laugh where she giggled like a little girl, and I adored it.
"He’ll learn. Or leave after a couple of weeks like the rest of 'em," I smiled under my nose at the noise of a chuckling kid in the living room. — "Ehi, dove sei? Vieni ad aiutarmi a preparare la cena, amore!" I said, asking her where she was and to help me with the prep.
"Still not there yet, angelo mio." She was Italian, and I wanted to impress her. Unfortunately for me, my time for learning was limited to listening to a vulgar neurotic Italian chef I worked with. He was the line cook at the not-so-fine dining place I worked for. Despite my young age, I was already a Sous-Grillardin - a second broiler chef - meaning I was responsible for anything that had to do with fire. Lea said it suited me.
"Wait!" she jumped from around the corner when I was about to open the cutlery drawer. She was hiding something behind her back. — "How about you try these, chef?" I didn’t know what it was at first. I was too focused on admiring her beautiful cheekbones and deep emerald eyes. — “I know it’s early," — she referred to my upcoming twentieth birthday. — "But you’ll be working on Friday, and I thought that since it’s our night…”
I finally moved my attention towards the package and saw a tall, rectangular bag, a knife roll, made from dark-brown leather, a cherry ribbon rosette around it.
"Lea, you didn’t." She stood there, blinding me with her pristine whites. It was too heavy to be just a knife roll. It had blades inside, and I was terrified about how much it must’ve cost her. We were dirt poor, and every single penny we had we used to pay for either uni or our flat just so that we didn't have to share it with anyone else.
I tore the ribbon and carefully placed the package on the counter. I spread it out and saw the handles of four blades inside, and just by looking at them, I knew how expensive they were because I recognized their shape, characteristic of one of Asia’s top bladesmiths.
"You’ve got to be kidding me." It was one of the Japanese vanadium steel knives. It must’ve cost her a grand, easily, and to us, barely struggling, hustling our way through life, it was a fortune. -- "Is this why you worked overtime these past three weeks?" I asked, fighting off the burning in my eyes.
"You’re not a commie anymore. You need to have your own set." She approached and cradled my face in her hands. -- "I am so proud of you." She gave me the purest of smiles. I hugged her and hid my face in her little shoulder.
"That’s not everything. Look inside the pocket." Her eyes were shining. — “It’s so that you have something to hang onto if you burn your hand or someone stabs you with a knife. I know it’s cheesy, but—"
"It’s not." I couldn’t stop looking at the little Polaroid showing our picture from the trip to the mountains we once took. I was kissing her forehead, and she was leaning towards me, a big smile on her face. We were fifteen back then and already deeply in love.
"I love it." I said, kissing her, just like in the picture. God, I loved her. And it wasn’t just because she had presented me with the most beautiful gift I had ever received in my life. She was the kindest, purest, and most wonderful person I had ever met in my life.
I wanted to try out the knives so badly, until she grabbed my hand and led me towards the bedroom. I was absolutely, completely, and unquestionably fine with putting the dinner on hold.
Obviously, I didn’t know that my life would turn to shit in the coming months. I didn’t know that my career as a struggling chef, working my way through law school, would be short-lived. I didn’t know that I would be recruited to an international intelligence agency. I didn’t know that I would lose Lea. I didn’t know that it was the start of the end of me and my happiness.
| Author Notes |
The passage acts as an interlude, revisiting situations that transpired before the events of the main plot in "Br'er Rabbit."
"Heart of Knives" memoirs transpire between Africa Exile Part II and III. |
By Bruce Carrington
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
A week has passed since the contract I did on Turbot. Fat Man disappeared from the face of the earth again, but Eli remained in Cape Town, evidently tired of the Mogadishu business he had been handling for a little over a year now.
We went to grab a beer on Long Street's long alley of bars and restaurants. It was Tuesday and the sun hadn't set yet, but the bars were already half-filled with a crowd of enthusiastic hoppers. We settled on a quiet one, with tables set on the pavement near the main road.
"I heard that the job went smoothly," Eli said after the waitress placed the beers down and gave me a suggestive smile to enjoy. I looked at him but didn't respond, hinting for him to change the conversation. I sipped my ice-cold beer and lit my cigarette.
"Alright, alright," He laughed, noticing my expression, and accepted one after I reached out my pack to him.
We engaged in small talk, and I relaxed a bit after we finished the first beer. The same cute waitress served us, but this time, I smiled back at her. She was in her mid-twenties, blonde, and had wonderful milky skin. Eli interrupted the silent conversation I had with the nice lady and kept talking about the job. He asked whether we found out anything about the money that Turbot stashed, and I said no. The only reason I was still in Cape Town was to avoid raising any red flags with Fat Man and his dogs. It would be indicative of me knowing about the money if I suddenly decided to travel outside of the town. I checked the coordinates, and the money was stashed on the outskirts of Lagos, on the other side of the continent.
"How much did he steal?" I casually queried while taking a sip and lighting another cigarette. "It's a mix. Based on what Fatso told me, there's around five million dollars in gold, drugs, and cash he skimmed over the years. But it might be more than that. Why?"
"Dave said it wasn't about the money, and I guess he was telling the truth.” Five million dollars wasn't even a fly's sting in Fat Man's business, so there must have been something else at play here. — "So what was it all about, Eli?" I finished, giving him a serious look. We had a good rapport with each other, but we both had to watch our backs working in the profession we had chosen.
"He lied. That's it,” Eli sipped the beer and lowered his head. — "He was ordered to do the job on the civilian who crossed Fat Man. He wanted to invest in real estate, and the guy, seeing how loaded he is, played him for a couple hundred grand. Fat Man found out and told Turbot to handle it, only he didn't."
"Why?"
"I guess he was tired. He had worked for the man for three years and had done lots of contracts for him, but everyone has to break someday.”
We sat there in silence, and I put my glasses down because the sun had set. I lit another of my cigarettes and looked at nothing. I was consumed by the recollections of our time in the Academy. I never knew Turbot well, but he always seemed to be a stand-up guy. Every evening, after school and field exercises, instructors would encourage us to make use of the facility's bar that was built on the Academy's premises, specifically to test our alcohol resilience and whether we could keep up with our fake personas. During those after-hours exercises, he proved that he could not only hold his liquor but also be an absolute center of attention, never breaking the fake story he had come up with, and that we all had to make even before joining the training.
We were told that alcohol was our friend and ally. That's why I ordered a third round for Eli and myself, as he started to open up and I wanted to extract all the information he had.
"How's the Somalia business?” I started the drilling.
"Slow. It isn't going the way he'd like it to go."
"How come?" I grinned to myself because I thought Fat Man's whole plan of becoming the country's warlord was so far-fetched that it bordered on being delirious.
"I mean, don't get me wrong. The clans are on our side, and he has the backing of the— " He stopped because the waitress came with refreshments, and she exchanged our coasters. Mine had her number on it, and she quickly retreated back inside, as if embarrassed. — "Is this what I think it is, you devious dog?" Eli turned my coaster to his side and laughed loudly.
I raised my hand to hold his thought before he continued and saw a familiar jeep pulling to the curb right beside us. It was Dave, and he rolled down the window, looking at me. He needed stitches after I'd put the karambit to his lips, and half of his face was swollen from how badly it had healed. I enjoyed that view.
"I need you to come with me," he said and kept looking at me, ignoring Eli, who sank into his chair.
"I'm busy," I said, sipping my beer and lighting the third cigarette.
"It's important. Orders from the top.”
I stood up and put the cash on the table, tipping the waitress excessively. I took the coaster and hid it in my pocket. Eli was still sitting in his place, looking at the unfinished beer in front of him. I could sense something was off.
I was penetrating his skull with my gaze so hard he finally looked up at me and shook his head slightly. I could see his jaw moving and hear his teeth grinding. His eyes were telling me that he's sorry.
"You coming?" Dave shouted from the window of his jeep and revved the gas pedal a couple of times. He was definitely excited about something.
I entered the jeep and knew that Eli had told him about where we were and that he somehow sold me out. But I was unsure about what he or Dave knew. I left my gun at home, but I was just too curious not to go with him.
"Can you not?" he asked and looked at my cigarette, which was still lit in my mouth. I rolled down the window and threw it out.
"What's so urgent?" I asked while looking outside the window.
"You'll see once we get there," he mumbled under his nose, and I knew he was going to torture me. I smiled and looked at him. He was focused on the road, but his hands were squeezing the wheel as if he wanted to be wherever he set the trap already.
We drove in complete silence, interrupted by the noises of leather squeaking under Dave's pressure. We were now on Victoria Road, famous for its scenery with the Atlantic on one side and the Twelve Apostles mountain range on the other. The jeep moved south, so I had a view over the ocean, and I let the refreshing breeze soothe my face. It was after sunset now, and the road wasn't as busy as it normally is. There were just a couple of cars in front of us and none behind.
The moment couldn't have been better.
I casually put on my seatbelt (something Dave didn't bother to do), grabbed the wheel that Dave was squeezing, and turned it sharply. The jeep crashed through the guardrail and was now flying through the bushes, separating the road and the beach. In a matter of seconds, we were rolling down a small cliff before the car settled in the shallows.
We landed upside down, and I hit my head on the doors where the airbag did not inflate. I touched my temple and could feel blood coming from what must have been a cut. I rubbed my eyes and pushed on the airbag to have a look. Dave was not in the car. There was a huge hole in the windshield, and I undid my belt and fell on the roof of the car, which was now filling with water.
I crawled my way out to the beach and saw that Dave was lying face down, seven meters in front of me at the shoreline. He had both of his arms broken because I could see the bones protruding from his body. He could move his legs, however, and he made irregular movements as if trying to get up. I grabbed his shirt by the collar and dragged him ashore. I threw him on his back and saw that blood was coming from his mouth, and he was having difficulty breathing. I looked around and saw that there were no lights on the road. It was empty, and Dave and I were alone. There was no one here who could interrupt us.
I sat my knee on his chest, and he made a wheezing noise. I knew his lungs were punctured. He kept trying to say something, but all he could produce were those whistling noises. I raised my knee from his chest and neared my face to his ear.
"Why?" I asked, and his eyes were still conscious enough to understand.
He kept fighting for air, and I was getting impatient. I placed my hand on his chest and pushed as hard as I could. Blood erupted from his mouth like hot water from a geyser, and I repeated my question. He gave up and mustered all his strength to whisper a single word.
“Laptop."
I squeezed my eyes for a moment but connected the dots in no time. Turbot turned off all of the cameras inside the house, all except one — the one in his laptop, the keyboards of which his face was still decaying on. If Fat Man hacked his laptop, he had access to the microphone too, which meant I was burned. Money didn’t matter here. What did matter was that I had lied and was now a target.
I squeezed Dave's nose and saw as he tried to spit the blood from his mouth to make room for air. His eyes were terrified for a whole minute before they faded. I sat beside his body and lit a cigarette. I needed to accelerate the plan now that I was in the crosshairs.
By Bruce Carrington
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.
The doors to my little beach house were half-opened and I could see the light coming from the kitchen. I heard the sound of someone going through my drawers.
I didn’t have my gun and I could barely see because my whole face was still covered in blood after I crashed Dave’s car. The cut on my temple kept producing the crimson liquid and my head was pulsating under the pressure of what felt like thousand knives stabbing me in the brain. Adrenaline after the accident was gone and I was seeing double. I wanted to vomit urgently. I was done for the night, yet, here we were. Me, painted red, seeing two half-open doors and two corridors from inside of which two sources of lights were partially illuminating the dark hallways.
I clumsily entered the house and with the stealth of a pregnant elephant made my way through. I had no idea what to do, but sincerely hoped that the look of me will prove disturbing and terrifying enough to scare the burglar. There was no chance it was Fat Man’s henchmen going through my stuff, trying to locate the notes with coordinates to Turbot stash that they’d never find because I memorised and destroyed it. I pushed this thought from my mind. In the end, it wasn’t about the money.
“Where do you keep the bloody teacups, kid?” Ben’s voice jackhammered my head and I thought I lost it. I entered the kitchen and saw him meddling through my cupboards, his back towards me. Kettle put on the gas was reaching it’s boiling point and starting to whistle. I was about to pass out.
“Second from the window.” I slurred and dropped to the ground.
I woke up on the couch some time later to see him stitching up my head. I saw him clearly and my face didn’t feel sticky anymore so he must had stopped the bleeding and cleaned the blood.
“What are you doing here?” I said and he shushed me. —“How did you find me?”
“I never lost you,” he said and gave me a fatherly-like smile. Sorrowful and sympathetic.
He finished his job, and I wanted to get up on the couch but he pushed me back into it.
“Rest, you have a concussion.”
“You have a concussion.”
“You blacked out, fell to the ground and managed to vomit in the meantime. You were on autopilot,” he said, and I saw the puddle under the kitchen bar. — “Go back to sleep. I’ll stay the night and keep an eye on you.” He didn’t have to tell me twice.
I woke up feeling like a newborn. I didn’t sleep well since the last two years and I felt well rested, despite that the head was still killing me. The slide doors to house’s veranda were opened and I saw that Ben left me two aspirins and a glass of water on the nearby table. I put them in my mouth and washed the pills down. I was thirsty like I never was in my life so I emptied the glass with one big gulp. I got up on the couch and saw that Ben cleaned the apartment from the sad results of my yesterday’s sickness.
“I see you did okay for yourself here.” Ben said when I joined him on the balcony. It overlooked the Atlantic and I felt the wind was picking up.
“Crime pays off,” until it doesn’t.
I sat beside him on the lounger, took a cigarette from the pack lying on the small table between us, and lit it.
“What happened yesterday?”
“How did you find me?” I bounced the question and Ben grinned to himself. I didn’t know I asked him about that yesterday.
I looked at him and he at me. He smiled at first but then saw the cut on my head he stitched yesterday and his mood darkened. He looked back at the ocean and I did too. The sun was setting and I jumped from my seat.
“Fuck!” I shouted trying to determine whether my brain was producing images that weren’t there. — “How long was I out?”
“Twenty hours or so,” Ben responded, glancing at the watch I'd presented him seven years ago.
My vision became blurry for a second but I steadied my nerves and rushed inside. I entered the living room and reached behind the couch cushion where I kept one of my guns. Ben followed, eyebrows raised and arms spread.
“Where did you park?” I asked while checking the magazine.
“Around the corner.”
“Let’s go.”
Twenty or so hours. Knowing Fat Man, he’d expect constant updates from Dave during the interrogation if not for a full-blown live transmission of my tortures. I shouldn’t have even come home in the first place yesterday but I was too concussion-high to realize it. By that point, he must have known that something was up.
We used the stairwell leading from the veranda down to the beach and proceeded back to the street. Ben didn’t ask, but I felt as if he knew more than I’d like, so he kept a close lookout. We made it to the car quickly and I told him to give me the keys.
“Forget about it, get in.” He was right. I was still in no position to drive. I took the passenger’s seat and Ben hit the gas.
We travelled back to the hotel where he was staying, and I kept watch to see whether or not we were being followed. We weren’t, but in case my state was too bad to spot any tail, Ben would know. He agreed that we were clear and I exhaled with relief.
We entered the lobby and I followed him to the hotel’s restaurant. We walked through the inside’s dining room and took up the seat outside on the long, ocean-view rooftop terrace. Waiter came up and presented us with the menus. Before he could tell us about the specialty of the evening, Ben kindly dismissed him stating that we’ll order the drinks first and the most surreal thing happened. Ever since I met him, he was a total and complete teetotaler, and here he was, ordering two scotches neat. The waiter took the order and disappeared inside.
“Ben, what’s going on?” I asked.
“You have some balls to ask me that, kid.” He replied and looked away and I could see that he bit the insides of his mouth.
Ben was watching the sunset now and I saw that he’s pissed off. His hands were clenched and I could hear the mental ticking noise of the bomb that was about to go off. There were people around us but at the distance that provided us with necessary space to speak comfortably.
“You disappear for over a year and don’t even bother to check-in once?” He was looking me straight in the eyes and I escaped from them and looked at the empty table. I felt like a little kid. — “I know what happened. I understand it. I really know what it’s like. I tried to give you space, but then I hear about all the shit you’ve been doing in Somalia and now here.”
“Precisely. You fucking know what it’s like. Don’t start with the lectures-“
“Shut the fuck up.” And I did because of how shocked I was. In the ten years we had known each other, I never heard him swear and I knew at that point that something was definitely happening. — “For nearly a decade I have drilled you, I cared for you, I invested in you only to watch it go to nothing because you lost someone.” I clenched my hands because I was in no mood to talk about it. He saw that. — “Think of her. Do you think she’d be proud of what her daddy became? The waste of space. A senseless murderer and cartel dog.”
I exhaled deeply and looked away. The sun was nearly gone and the ocean breeze that was always calming my nerves was gone too. I bit my tongue and Ben kept talking.
“I need you back. You’re burned, but it’s not the end of the world. I need you to take my place. I need you to forget about all this shit that you’ve dived into.”
I looked at him with my eyebrows lowered and could sense the tingling in my chest. He would never retire and all I could muster was this pathetic excuse of a joke.
“Why? Cancer finally caught up with you?” I said with the foolish grin and he looked at me with the saddest of expressions.
I sunk into the seat with my mouth open to mutter a question that never came. I just stared at him and moved my mouth like a fish trying to breath above the water. Everything was black but I could hear the response to my nonverbal question coming from the black void in front of me.
“Prostate. It already spread.”
“How long?”
“They say two, three tops.”
The vision was back and I wanted to grab him by the face and shout that he should have fucking put the finger up his ass once in a while but the waiter came to serve us the drinks. I finished mine within a second and asked him to bring the whole bottle.
I hid my face in the palms of my hands and rubbed my eyes. The sun was gone, earth kept spinning, and the stars kept dying above us.
|
You've read it - now go back to FanStory.com to comment on each chapter and show your thanks to the author! |
| © Copyright 2015 Bruce Carrington All rights reserved. Bruce Carrington has granted FanStory.com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
© 2015 FanStory.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Privacy Statement