by Shawn Jones
Warrior’s Scar
by
Shawn Jones
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Out of every one hundred men,
ten shouldn’t even be there,
eighty are just targets,
nine are the real men,
and we are lucky to have them,
for they make the battle.
Ah, but the one!
One is a warrior,
and he will bring the others back.
-Heraclitus
One
November, Early Twenty-First Century
Tulsa, OK
At 4:20 p.m., Cort Addison decided to stop for the day. After nine hours of sitting at his desk, he wanted to go outside and feel the Sun. Never mind that he would be getting into a car that would also keep him from feeling the sunlight. Too many times he had stayed late to finish a project and had only succeeded in making Angela mad. Anyone who knew Angela Addison also knew just how stupid that was. Tonight, he would surprise her with two hours of alone time before they had to be at her parents’ house for dinner. What a lovely thought: Dining with Diane Johnson, Cort’s mother-in-law, and Chief Tactician for Attila the Hun, along with Ted Johnson, whose only major flaw was his wife. In reality, Cort did not really have as much spite for the woman as he let on, but for the last few months it was just too difficult to see her. Not even Angela knew about his weakness when it came to her mother.
As Cort walked out of his office, he saw his assistant Carole Hunter tapping away at her HP, rushing to finish a job that he should have finished days ago. This is where the guilt would have set in, if Carole had been a regular assistant in a regular office. Leaving early when someone else was doing your work was a no-no in any office, especially when you had to walk past that person to leave; however, this was not a regular office. Carole earned a very respectable amount of money to run Consolidated Security for Cort, which he had never been able to devote his full attention to. Truth be told, he didn’t devote five percent of his time to it. Cort knew it was his company, but it was Carole’s business. The good part was she ran it his way, and she did it so well that either of them could pick up right where the other had left off and never miss a beat. If he suddenly disappeared, which happened often enough, she knew what to do and when he got back he could take over from her again as if it were a baton relay in the Olympics. They were a team, and thanks to her efforts, his erratic schedule never once affected a case.
The other employees knew Carole ran the show and had learned, sometimes through the termination of their peers, that the best-kept secret in the company was Cort’s whereabouts at any given time. Once, an investigator who had been working for Consolidated had tried to find out on his own. Within weeks, he was unemployed, unlicensed, and facing federal criminal charges in a court over a thousand miles away. He had been warned to leave it alone, but he hadn’t heeded those warnings. No one else in the company had made the same mistake.
“No calls, Carole, no matter what. Unless it is after seven, then I will give you a day off.”
“Not a chance, boss. I love hearing your war stories. Besides, Angela’s mom thinks the world of you, doesn’t she?” The tone of her voice made Cort want to send Carole instead, just so she would understand exactly what he went through for his lovely wife.
“Sure,” Addison replied, “she thinks I am corrupt, evil, and socially deprived.”
“Sounds pretty insightful to me.”
“You’re fired. After you finish whatever you’re doing.” He turned and walked down the hallway, ignoring whatever it was that Carole shot back at him. As he got off the elevator at the lower level of the parking garage under his building, he looked over and saw his second love; a shiny black Dodge Viper Angela had left in their garage two weeks ago.
In the sunlight, the car’s paint looked so deep you could have gone swimming in it, but it was impressive even in the dim fluorescent lights of the building’s parking lot. He couldn’t figure out how Angie had known he wanted that car, but he was not going to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. When he sank into the ‘cockpit’, he felt like a space shuttle crewmember preparing for launch. The dash was a barrage of various gauges and lights, each supposedly monitoring one aspect of the engine’s performance. More likely, the engineers and designers at Chrysler had added them simply to make the car seem more like a high tech transport than an ordinary run of the mill two hundred miles per hour muscle car. The soft leather interior made him think of the way his brother Avery could roll the phrase “rich Corinthian leather” off his tongue well enough to make Ricardo Montalban jealous. But that was a long time ago, when we were still brothers. Before Mom died. We were still a whole family then. She was the glue that kept us all together, wasn’t she?
Idling out of the underground parkade, he waved to the security guard and pulled onto Sixth Street. Going west, he turned left again, pulled onto the highway, and immediately took the Riverside Parkway turnoff, knowing it was early enough that Tulsa’s newest highway addition would still be flowing smoothly. He would be able to kick it up to seventy-five, and be home in ten minutes. After all, it was a shame to waste ten cylinders on city streets driving behind someone who kept their right blinker on for ten blocks at twenty-five miles per hour, before turning left against the light.
The parkway was Tulsa’s latest attempt to ease one of the city’s traffic problems. Mayor LaFortune, one of a long line of Green Country benefactors, had re-introduced the plan after three previous defeats, and had added enough political influence to the idea that he succeeded where previous mayors had not. While many Tulsans had opposed the plan, it narrowly passed, and Addison thought it was the best thing to happen to Tulsa traffic since the opening of the I-244 bypass. It was a godsend to downtown workers trying to get to and from work, and it brought a much-needed boost to property values in the Riverside area.
Most of the parkway’s opponents had argued it would take away from the beauty of River Parks, and that the people who enjoyed the area were already breathing enough carbon monoxide. As it turned out, widening the driving area on the west bank of the Arkansas River Valley had increased the breezeway there and contributed to virtual elimination of Tulsa’s Ozone Alert Program. Addison didn’t even try to understand the science behind it.
His cell phone rang, and without looking at the caller ID, he hit the green button. “I said ‘no matter what’, Carole.”
“Guess again, laughing boy. If you treated me like you treat her, I would demand a raise.”
“You wouldn’t get it, babe. You already cost me too much. Besides, you can’t type worth a damn.” Cort replied.
“Just be glad you don’t have a car payment. You know, I bought you that thing to keep you from finding another woman. I am using you, sweetheart.” Angela Addison’s biggest asset was her ability to keep her husband’s mouth in check. “When are you going to be home? Dinner is at seven, but Mom wants us there at six-thirty, and Dad needs some help with his PC.”
“I’ll be there in about three minutes; I’m getting off at 81st Street now.”
Denver, CO
As the Amtrak sped into Denver proper, Engineer Rick Dane eased back the throttle control for the two mammoth power plants, slowing the train for its final approach to the downtown Union Station. One hundred eighty-six passengers and crewmembers would soon be greeting loved ones and friends in preparation for turkey day. For Rick, that meant his wife Christine, and hopefully a weekend blowout of the Vikings by the Broncos. They hadn’t lost a game
this season, and Rick was betting a cool hundred they wouldn’t this Sunday, either. When he felt the cabin lurch forward, though, football had no place in his mind.
The trip had started in Baltimore, with stops all the way from D.C. to Chicago, before starting the long climb into the high altitudes that always played havoc on the engines. This trip was different though. It had gone perfectly. Designers had put a new fuel-air regulator on the diesel-electric engines that was supposed to use an on-board computer to calculate the perfect mixture based on altitude, humidity, and barometric pressure. It had worked exactly the way it was designed to, much to Rick Danes’ surprise. More than once in his twenty-two years as a ‘driver’, designers had left him and his train stuck in the middle of a lonely stretch of rail, because they were sure they had come up with the perfect gadget.
It was during one of those unscheduled stops fifteen years earlier that he had met Christine Richards, a passenger who had been rather irate, to say the least, that she was not going to meet her boyfriend on time. By the time the train was rolling again, she was already formulating her ‘Dear John’ speech, because like Rick, she knew it was meant to be. She often traveled with him over the next two years, and then one afternoon Rick had surprised her. Rick’s supervisors all respected him a lot, so when he went to them with his request, they didn’t hesitate to grant it. They allowed Christine to ride in the engineer’s cabin with him; because it was the same route they had taken that first trip two years earlier. Christine didn’t realize it had it been two years to the day since they had met, so when the train broke down yet again, she took it in stride, although the area did seem vaguely familiar to her.
Rick told her and the other passengers that the stop would be brief, but that they did have enough time to step off the train for a few minutes, and apologized for the inconvenience. Rick and Chris stepped down just as she realized she recognized two of the passengers as friends from college. Soon she realized that she knew nearly every single person she saw stepping off the train. Family, friends, even a few neighbors. She turned to find Rick’s eyes level with her chest as he kneeled down and pulled a ring from his pocket. She cried as she said yes, and fifteen minutes later, in front of friends, family, and the very same Amtrak crew she had tested two years before at the very same spot, Christine Sharon Richards became Mrs. Richard William Dane.
But right now, Rick Dane was calling on everything he had learned about trains to try and save this one. All the gauges checked out fine, except the speedometer. The train which had never before approached its one hundred and fifty miles per hour maximum speed was now traveling well over the one hundred and seventy-five top end on its speedometer. Rick thought it felt like closer to two hundred. Turning to the newly installed Fuel-Air Regulation System (FARS), he saw the computer indicated the train was now approaching three hundred miles per hour and was still accelerating. Automatic braking systems were offline, and manual overrides were limp. The hydraulics were gone, but he had never heard an alarm indicating such. He had no idea what was happening, and had no idea what to do to stop it. He looked up and saw Denver’s Union Station approaching, thanking God that his train didn’t cross any roadways. Then he realized what would happen when he went through the station that fast. If the track switches weren’t set right, hundreds of tons of Amtrak train would become a giant bullet. More like a giant artillery shell. Crashing into a car might have prevented what he knew was coming. He knew all he could do was pray, and the last conscious thought Rick Dane had was that Christine would be eating alone this holiday.
Tulsa, Ok
“Mom is not going to be mad that we are ten minutes late.” Angela told her husband.
“Maybe not mad, but she will have some comment about how it’s my fault that we are late, and how my inconsideration for others has ruined your life, and how she wished I would just try and be a little more responsible.” Cort was already formulating his diplomatic response in his head.
“Well, it was worth it wasn’t it?” His wife asked.
“Oh yeah, but how do I explain to your mother that her only child figured out a way to use a Nordic Track as a sex toy?”
“I didn’t hear you complaining an hour ago.”
“That’s because I thought I could last long enough to miss dinner altogether. So, the usual bet?”
“Sure. Now quit griping and answer your phone.” Angela said as she handed him the cell phone.
It was a text message. PRIORITY. SW FLT 1287 19:15 DENVER. BEN. Ben was Cort’s ‘handler’. When Uncle Sam wanted Cort to dance, it was Ben Natsumo who called the tune.
“Way to go, Ben! Saved by the Feds.” Angela didn’t hear him because she had read the message at the same time he did. She hated the thought of the holiday without him. He had to go, and she knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier. “How long do you think?”
Cort pulled onto the shoulder to do a U-turn. “I don’t know. If it’s more than a day, I will have Ben put you on a plane, and we can spend the holiday with Sheryl and Dad. Let me call him and set it up. Maybe he can give us an idea how long it will be. I’m sorry, Angie…” She cut him off.
“Don’t try and explain. It is your job, honey. You have to earn the money I spend sometimes you know.” She feigned a smile. Now she was the one who was formulating an excuse for her mother. “Just bad timing. Call Ben.”
He dialed the number and waited for Ben to pick up at the other end. “I love you, Angela.” He wasn’t sure if the relief was her understanding, which she always did, or his joy at avoiding her mother. Equally strong emotions. “Ben, Cort here. What’s up?” Cort’s wife watched as her husband touched a button to ensure the encryption was active on his phone. It was integrated into the battery pack, and appeared as just a long life battery except for the green light at its base. As Angela watched the blood drain from her husband’s face, she knew in her soul that something was much more wrong than ever before. Together or apart, she suspected this was going to be no normal holiday.
“Listen, Ben. Get Angela up there as soon as you can.” He could tell Ben wasn’t telling him something that he wanted to, but decided he would know soon enough. “Clear me at the military gate, and I’ll be there in an hour. See you soon.” Cort disconnected. “They just closed Denver to commercial traffic. Snow storm. Ben’s going to get you up there as soon as he can. I’m going in a fighter that is warming up for me right now. Tell your folks I am sorry. I really am, Angie.”
“They have never sent you in a fighter before. What’s going on?” Actually, he had been in fighters and military planes several times, but he couldn’t talk to her about that. Even though he kept no secrets from Angela, there were some things he just didn’t talk about.
“I can’t say yet.” Cort replied. Then he decided she would know soon enough. “Listen, the President is dead. You know you can’t say anything to anyone until you see it on the news, babe.”
“Dead?” He could hear the shock in her voice. “What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet. He was on a train that just crashed in Denver. There were one hundred and eighty-six altogether on the train, and he wasn’t supposed to be one of them. That’s all I can say right now.” What he did not say was that President Rice had been in an Amtrak car with two known terrorists, both on the FBI’s most wanted list, for links to Al-Qaeda. It didn’t add up. At least not yet. By the time Cort Addison started doing his part of the job though, it would. The question was, why did Ben want him there now? He never got involved until there was a plan of action.
Sitting in the car beside him, Angela looked like an angel. Her long auburn hair was naturally very curly, thanks to her Irish blood. The pale color of her skin, her lithe, long body, and the wisdom that you could see just looking at her made her appear to be an elven queen from a book by Tolkien. They had been married eight years, and everything they had amassed meant nothing to him compared to her.
Her mother Diane had been totally against her relationship with Cort
, and only went to the wedding because she had to keep up appearances. She did refuse to pay one cent toward it though, even though Ted had insisted that Cort take three thousand dollars he had been rat-holing from his wife ever since he had met Cort. He knew from how Cort and Angie looked at each other, that he had lost his little girl. In one sense, Cort knew that Diane was right. He was most definitely not good enough for her daughter. No man alive was. She was an Irish goddess, plain and simple. She had been raised in the upper class, while Cort came from a family that had gone from lower middle class when he was born, to middle class by the time he had graduated high school. Diane had expected Angela to emerge a debutante and command the attention of any man she wanted. What Diane didn’t count on was Angela choosing the youngest son of a common postal worker. Cort didn’t even have a college degree.
Cort took a secret (in reality, it was anything but secret) satisfaction knowing that he had provided as well for Angela as any Fortune Five Hundred executive could have. Not bad for a kid who couldn’t even run around the block as a child without collapsing from an asthma attack. Now six-four and two hundred eighty lean pounds, he often joked that he had to be big, to get back at all the people who had picked on him as a kid. Angela did work, though she didn’t need to. She did it because she wanted to be able to buy him surprises without him having any clue. Not even Cort knew that. He thought it was so she could be more ‘independent’. One such little surprise had been the Viper. Every time he was alone with her, he showed her his appreciation. Sometimes twice. They probably would have been doing that anyway. In any case, Angela knew her next surprise for him was going to have to be gargantuan to outdo the Viper. She already knew what it was, although she hadn’t decided how or when she was going to share it with him. It would have to be before she was showing just what the surprise was.