Shock and Awe

by Hervey Copeland

  SHOCK

  AND

  AWE

  By

  Hervey Copeland

  Copyright © Hervey Copeland 2019

  The moral right of Hervey Copeland to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication is to be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is coincidental

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  1

  The late evening breeze felt cool against Miguel Rodriguez’s skin as he stepped out of ‘La Hacienda’ on the corner of 1st and East Jefferson in downtown Phoenix. He paused for a few seconds and gave the bouncer who had held the door for him and his date, a young lady by the name of Maria, a quick nod and a crumpled ten dollar bill.

  Then he walked over to the curb, got a cigarette out from the pack in his breast pocket and lit it. He flicked the used match into the street, before casually slipping the rest of the cigarettes back in his pocket. Then he leaned up against the lamp post and looked back at the restaurant he’d just exited.

  Standing there in the cool evening air, breathing in the sweet nicotine from the Marlboro filled him with a sense of well-being, and for the next minute and a half he just enjoyed the ambience of the area while casually observing the throngs of people passing by on the sidewalk.

  Maria, the young lady he had just wined and dined, was standing in front of one of the restaurant’s big windows that were facing the street. Her head was slightly bowed and she was talking on her cellphone.

  Rodriguez knew she was talking to her mom. He also knew what the conversation was about. Maria was letting her mother know that she wasn’t coming back home tonight. And that fact was contributing immensely to the well-being that Rodriguez was experiencing at the moment. The thought of what was about to happen next sent chills up and down his spine.

  For the last month, the routine had been the same. Twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays, he would pick up Maria from the house she shared with her mom and younger brother, and together they would visit some of the most exclusive restaurants in Phoenix. Afterward they would head over to his apartment on East McKinley Street for a couple of hours of passionate lovemaking.

  Then early in the morning when Maria was still asleep, he would sneak out and drive home to his wife and kids in Paradise Valley, pretending he’d just returned home from his office in Albuquerque.

  He didn’t know whether his wife suspected that he was having an affair or not, but he didn’t particularly care. She never complained, and she seemed to believe his explanations of having to meet with his managers on those particular days.

  Nor was his conscience bothering him. He was giving her a lifestyle that she would otherwise only have achieved in her wildest dreams. A lifestyle he knew that Maria too was desperately trying to ease her way into. Because Rodriguez was under no illusions that the young, hot Latina was sleeping with him because of his exceptionally good looks.

  He thought about how absurd it was that a girl like Maria would voluntarily sleep with a guy like him. And how absurd it was that there were thousands of women just like her that would gladly have taken her place.

  He was in his mid-fifties, stocky with a receding hairline and wore thick glasses, and had never been considered a catch. And under normal circumstances, Maria wouldn’t even have dignified him with a flick of the head if they had happened to pass each other out on the street. But the circumstances weren’t exactly normal.

  Rodriguez was rich, filthy stinking rich, and that changed the entire equation. And if there was one thing that he had learned in this life, it was that money was very helpful in lowering people’s mental boundaries.

  And it had certainly lowered Maria’s. The things he had gotten away with in the bedroom would have raised the hair on the back of the necks of most respectable women.

  The thought made him smile, and he took a few more drags from the cigarette before he quashed the butt with the heel of his shoe. Then he took a step forward and saw Maria fold the old Nokia and slip it into her handbag.

  “Do you want to get a cab, honey?” she said, as she walked over to him and gave him a peck on the cheek. She had to bend down slightly to do so, and he could see a couple of women casting disapproving glances at them as they walked past. They probably think she’s a hooker, Rodriguez thought. And then he quickly reminded himself that they weren’t that far off the mark.

  “No, let’s just walk. The fresh air will do us both good.”

  He stuck his elbow out, and she expertly threaded her arm through the gap, and the two of them joined the stream of people moving out of the area.

  The temperature was still pleasant, despite being in the middle of October. Hot air radiated toward them from the blacktop and the numerous concrete structures that had soaked up the heat from the sun during the day. And once again Rodriguez was thinking about how perfect his life was. If someone had asked him there and then if there was anything he would like to change about his life, he would simply have shook his head and told them no. There was absolutely no room for improvement whatsoever.

  When they arrived at East Van Buren Street, they turned right and disentangled themselves from the crowd and ended up having the sidewalk pretty much to themselves.

  “I really want to thank you for helping out mom,” Maria said. She turned her head and gave him a reserved smile.

  “You know, the new medication has really eased the pain.”

  Rodriguez nodded.

  “It was the least I could do. No one deserves to be in pain, and especially not when there’s medication out there that can take care of it.”

  Maria leaned her head against his shoulder and squeezed herself a little tighter against his body, and Rodriguez noticed that his breathing started to increase. He hoped she would show him exactly how grateful she was when they arrived back at the apartment.

  “You know your mother is a good woman Maria, and she deserves the best.” He didn’t mean what he was saying, but he knew how to play the game, and he knew how to press all the right buttons in order to get what he wanted.

  He didn’t care one iota for the old bird, and on the few occasions he’d met her, he couldn’t wait to get away. He had always felt uncomfortable in her presence. It was like she was telling him with her eyes that she knew exactly what type of game he was playing, but chose to remain quiet. Mainly because she realized that she needed him even more than her daughter did.

  They continued east for a few more minutes, before turning north again and then ten minutes later reached their destination, the apartment complex on East McKinley Street where Rodriguez’s love nest was located.

  The building was a modern eight story structure that had been built four years earlier to cater to the demands of the hip and trendy that wanted to be close to the amenities of the city. And Rodriguez used it exclusively to entertain the young ladies that were attracted to his wealth and power, and who had made a deliberate choice to ignore his other attributes, or rather lack thereof.

  As he was about to get his key out to open the door to the foyer, his cellphone start
ed vibrating in his pocket. He quickly got it out and saw the ‘No caller I.D.’ fill up the upper half of the screen. He frowned and wondered who it could be. Most of the calls he received were from numbers stored in the cellphone’s directory.

  He hesitated for a moment, thinking that whatever it was could wait until tomorrow. The last thing he wanted right now was to be disturbed. But then again, it could be important, and besides one of his many job requirements was to be available 24/7. He also knew that if he chose to ignore the call and it turned out to be an urgent matter, there would be serious repercussions.

  “Yes, it’s Rodriguez,” he said as he placed the phone next to his ear and stepped away from the door.

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then a deep voice started talking.

  “Mr. Rodriguez, I have some very important information that I need to share with you.”

  Rodriguez frowned and cast a quick glance over at Maria, who was standing a few feet away, looking at a young couple heading toward the city on the opposite sidewalk.

  “Who am I talking to?” Rodriguez said, sensing that for once his gut feeling had been off.

  “Who I am is not important, but what I have to tell you is.”

  Rodriguez closed his eyes and sighed, and debated whether he should just hang up or not. But he decided that he should at least hear what the guy had to say first.

  “Ok, shoot. I’m all ears.”

  “Can you see the black Crown Vic on the other side of the street, about a hundred yards to your left?”

  Rodriguez squeezed the phone a little tighter, turned around and saw the car. It was parked outside ‘The Depot’, the local hardware store.

  His heart started pumping a little faster, and he noticed the sweat that had started to form on his forehead. It was too dark to see if there was anyone inside the vehicle or not, but he guessed that there probably was. How else could the guy know that he was standing outside the apartment complex?

  Rodriguez felt uncomfortable knowing that someone was observing him, someone he didn’t know and whose intentions were still unclear. He placed his fist in front of his mouth and cleared his throat.

  “Yeah, I can see it. Is that where you are at the moment?”

  Rodriguez kept his eyes fixed on the car and wondered what the message was, and if it entailed a face to face meeting with the mysterious caller. But there was no reply, only silence coming from the other end.

  “Hey, do you want to tell me what this is about or not?” Rodriguez said and shrugged as he took a few steps toward the car.

  But the silence persisted, and then as Rodriguez was about to finish the call, a quick flash appeared from the roof of the hardware store. This was followed a fraction of a second later by a loud bang, and Rodriguez felt like he’d just been hit by a speeding train. He relinquished the grip on the phone, and it fell and hit the ground. And a few seconds later Rodriguez did the same.

  He was lying face down, arms and legs splayed out, and in the center of his head was a hole that he could’ve put his little finger inside if he’d still been alive. But unfortunately for Rodriguez, he wasn’t. His heart had stopped beating just before his body hit the sidewalk.

  A few moments of absolute silence followed, and then Maria started screaming hysterically. She threw herself down next to her dead lover and placed her arms on his shoulders, and started shaking him as hard as she could, as if that would somehow bring him back to life again. And her screams didn’t stop until the paramedics arrived ten minutes later and gave her a strong sedative.

  2

  The tall man with the steely blue eyes lunged forward and propelled his closed fist toward Matt Brunner’s solar plexus. The punch was extremely powerful, and it would have left Matt gasping for air if it had hit its intended target. But it didn’t. And besides, Matt had been expecting it. He quickly moved his body to the left and deflected the attack by sweeping the clenched fist away with his forearm. Then with equal speed, he advanced on his opponent and drove his knee into the guy’s stomach. Half a second later it came back down again, and he quickly moved it behind the guy’s leg. There he pulled it back toward himself and swept his opponent off his feet. The guy crashed down hard on the floor, and Matt finished the combination with the obligatory punch to the stomach.

  The entire attack and counter attack had taken less than three seconds, and when Matt took a step back, he felt immense satisfaction when he saw the stunned look on his opponent’s face.

  “Wow, I didn’t see that one coming,” the man with the steely blue eyes said, as he slowly got back up on his feet.

  “You were fast Danny, but you have to remember that your opponent can easily block your punches. And if he does, you have to be prepared for a counter attack. That’s why you can’t let your guard down and leave your lower body exposed, like you just did.”

  Matt adjusted the white top of his karate uniform, and rearranged the black belt with the three yellow stripes so that the knot was facing forward again. Then he turned and looked up at the clock on the wall at the back of the dojo. It was a five minutes to eight and time to wrap things up for the evening.

  “Ok Danny, why don’t you head over to the punching bag and give it a bit of a workout before we call it a night?”

  “Ous, Sensei,” Danny said, honoring Matt with the Japanese word for master. His upper body was leaned forward and he was looking Matt straight in the eye. His lower arms were pointed at a ten degree angle away from his body and were in an almost horizontal position, his fists clenched tightly. Then he turned around and began making his way over to the two, red punching bags in the corner of the big room, and started bombarding the one on the left with kicks and punches.

  Matt followed him with his eyes for a couple of seconds, before redirecting his attention to the other students. There were roughly thirty of them inside the spacious dojo, and apart from Matt and Danny, they were all engaged in kumite, or light sparring. The room was steaming hot and filled with the sound of feet rubbing against the hardwood floor, legs and fists hitting human flesh and the occasional kiai.

  The two big ceiling fans that were running at full speed and the entrance door that had been propped open were not enough to lower the temperature. And the fact that they were in Phoenix, in the middle of a desert, didn’t exactly make things easier in that regard.

  Matt dried away the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform and began moving around the room, and watched the white clad bodies that were gliding back and forth like an enormous slushy wave.

  He stopped and made a few comments here and there, and gave praise whenever a student managed to land a good punch or a kick. He also reminded those on the receiving end to keep up their guards.

  The majority of the students were males, ranging in age from fourteen to almost sixty. Most of them were intermediates that had been frequenting the dojo for only a couple of years. They were able to defend themselves at a fairly competent level, but could in no way be classified as expert fighters. Only two were wearing the coveted black belt. But theirs only had a single yellow stripe, indicating that they were still only Sempais, the Japanese word for instructor, and not a Sensei like Matt.

  He paused beside one of them and watched him give a skinny guy with a yellow belt a proper workout. And when he leapt forward and landed a perfect punch to the stomach of his opponent half a minute later, Matt gave him an approving nod and commended him for a well executed attack.

  Then he resumed his walk around the dojo before telling his students to stop and line up a few minutes later. His voice reverberated between the painted cinder block walls, and the students quickly walked over to the middle of the room and formed two parallel lines.

  They organized themselves according to rank, with the highest graded students at the front and to the right, and the lowest graded ones, the white and blue belts at the back.

  The sweat was pouring off their faces and they were facing Matt with stony expressions. He studied them for a
while and gave them an approving nod, and praised them for their efforts. Then he gave the order for ‘Zeiza’, the meditation position that every training session at the Phoenix Kyokushin Karate dojo started and finished with.

  They got down on the floor and placed their lower legs under their thighs and their fists against their hips. Then Matt gave the command for “Mokuso”, and everyone closed their eyes.

  The goal of the exercise was to try to clear their minds and make the mental transition to the outside world that was waiting for them once they left the dojo. Matt had always enjoyed the ritual and found that it was a good way to wind down and relax at the end of the session.

  They sat like this for a couple of minutes, before Matt told them to open their eyes and get up. Then he officially ended the training session and the students were free to begin with their stretching exercises.

  As they started to move away, Matt turned around and made his way over to the wall behind him. When he got there, he placed his left palm against the wall, grabbed hold of his ankle and pressed the heel of his foot against the back of his thigh. And he immediately felt the slightly comfortable, yet painful sensation spread itself across the front of the thigh. He closed his eyes and bit down hard, and thought to himself that this was probably the same sensation that people who were into S&M experienced whenever they were going at it. The notion made him smile and he quickly shook his head and sighed at the absurd line of thought.

  A few moments passed and then he could hear someone approaching. When he opened his eyes and turned his head, he saw Cory Morrison, the owner of the dojo standing beside him. He had a slightly anxious look on his face, and Matt realized straight away what was on his mind. He felt a cold lump form in his stomach and he dreaded what was coming, but he had enough self control not to show it.