Allegiance Burned: A Jackson Quick Adventure

by Tom Abrahams

  The gray light of dusk makes it difficult to read his face, to gauge his expression. He steps from a faint light, back into a shadow, maybe sensing that I’m reading him.

  “Mack,” he says, “Come now. Stand over here with me. We need to keep keen watch on our compatriots here.” We’re standing at the edge of the terrace, our backs to the waist high stone wall.

  “What’s your play?” Bella asks. She must really be a Homeland fan.

  “Good question,” Sir Spencer says. “Worthy of a CEO. Or a former CEO. Either one. Take your pick.”

  Neither of us say anything, but Bella squeezes my hand. Her thumbnail digs into my skin.

  “So,” he says, “here’s how it will go, my dear friends. I know you, Jackson, elicited the assistance of a young package clerk in Frankfurt.” He must sense some involuntary reaction in my face because his widens into a broad grin. “Box 2929 was it?”

  He found two of the pieces!!

  Bella squeezes my hand again, and looks up at me. I don’t look at her, but I can sense her glare. She thinks we’re done for. She thinks it’s over.

  Sir Spencer pulls two silver hard drives from his coat pocket. “Yes, it was 2929. Which rhymes with gold mine, and wonderful find, and neutrino beam. No,” he laughs, “it doesn’t rhyme with beam. That was silly. But here they are. And that brings me to the lone remaining piece of the puzzle, which one of you holds on your person somewhere.” He looks at Mack and motions for him to check us.

  “Move away from the edge of the terrace, please,” he says, “and raise your hands above your heads. I’m really very sorry for having to do this, but this is what’s necessary. I have a very eager buyer and time is of the essence.”

  “Who’s the buyer?” I raise my hand to shoulder level. I don’t want my shirt lifting up above my waist.

  “Germany.”

  “Germany?” Bella asks as Mack approaches her. “Why Germany?”

  Sir Spencer shrugs. “It was them or Israel, and the Germans have more means at the moment.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I say.

  “Of course it does,” Sir Spencer laughs. “Why do you think the NSA was hacking Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone? They knew something was amiss. I’ve been fighting NSA taps on my electronics for years. Apparently German intelligence, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, isn’t as good as my people. Whatever, they want the process. They’re paying for it. I’ll give it to them. Maybe I’ll give it to the Israelis too. Nobody will be the wiser if two bidders have the process.”

  “Why not give it to everyone?” I ask. “You make money and everyone loses their nukes. It’s peace everywhere.”

  “Ha!” he laughs again. “Jackson! Really? There’s no money in peace.”

  “I’ve got it,” Mack pulls Blogis’ silver drive from Bella’s pocket. He holds it up like a prize.

  “Very good,” says Sir Spencer. “Toss it here, good man.”

  Mack switches hands to toss the drive toward Spencer. During that split second, I reach into my waistband and pull the Smith & Wesson Governor, leveling it above Mack’s hand as he lets go of the drive.

  Pow! Pow! Pow!

  Three rapid pulls of the revolver’s trigger and the drive tumbles over the terrace wall, propelled ninety degrees in the wrong direction from the force of the shot shell that peppered the drive’s internal magnetic platters. The final piece of the process disintegrates before the drive hits the tall grass twenty yards down the slope of the castle hill.

  I turn to see Sir Spencer gasp, comically reaching for the drive long since destroyed.

  “Are you kidding me?” Mack blasts at me. “All of this work, this pain, and you destroy it? I can’t let that happen. I can’t let you get away with that.” Mack levels his weapon at me.

  “Wait a moment now, Mack,” Sir Spencer intervenes. “There’s no need —”

  Pop! Pop!

  Two shots find their way into my chest. The searing pain burns, knocks the air from my lungs, and puts me flat against the ground. I feel like I’ve been punched with a hot poker.

  “Mack!” Bella screams. “What have you done? Jackson? Jackson?”

  I’m staring at a dark, starless sky, struggling to breathe, grabbing wildly at the holes in my body, when Bella grabs my head and cradles it her lap. “You’ll be okay, Jackson.”

  “Now that was unnecessary,” Sir Spencer says. “It’s not as though we can find our way to a solution here, Mack.”

  Pop! Pop!

  Bella screams and I’m sure I’ve been hit again, when there’s a distant grunt and something cracks against the stone terrace flooring.

  “Mack!” Bella screams. “Mack!”

  “Mack’s dead.” Sir Spencer’s large frame appears over my head, looking into my eyes and then at my wounds. “Shooting Jackson wasn’t his decision to make.”

  “Call for help!” Bella yells. “Get Jackson some help!”

  “You’re in no position to demand anything from me,” Sir Spencer says. He walks out of my line of sight, which is dimming with each passing second. “He just cost me hundreds of millions of dollars and at least two embarrassing phone calls.”

  The pulse against my neck is weakening. The searing heat is giving way to a chill running through my spine to my feet. The only warmth is a wet ooze below my collarbone. I must be losing a lot of blood.

  Bella is stroking my head and crying, trying to keep me calm with a motherly “Shhh!” between sobs.

  In the distance there’s the rhythmic beep of someone punching numbers into a cell phone, then the distant two-tone wail of emergency sirens. My focus shifts from Bella’s face to the empty sky above, my body feels as though it’s sinking into stone, into Bella’s hands, and everything goes dark.

  ***

  “Jackson?” whispers a soft voice close to my ear. “Jackson, are you awake?”

  My eyes flutter against the light.

  “You are awake!” Still a whisper. “Let me pull the shades so that you can see. It’s bright outside. The light gives way to dark and my eyes readjust. This time I can see.

  “Bella?”

  “You’re okay,” she soothes. “The bullets both passed through. Neither of them hit any major vessels. You got so lucky. Just a broken collarbone.” She sits bedside and grabs my hand in hers.

  “How long…?”

  “Two days. You’ve been here two days.”

  “What about the process?” I swallow against a thick, dry lump. “I killed it, right?”

  “You killed it,” she says. “It was like a quick draw from an old western. You made Swiss cheese out of the drive.”

  “No process then?”

  “No.” She rubs her thumbs against the back of my hand. “It’s okay though. Nobody else will get it. I don’t know, honestly. I’m just concerned about you at the moment.”

  “Your job?”

  “Not important,” she says. “I resigned.”

  “Spencer?”

  “He disappeared,” she says. “He’s the one who called for help. He called the ambulance.”

  “Mack?”

  “He’s…”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

  “Lots of blame for both of us,” I say.

  “We’re quite a pair, right?”

  A pair?

  “Mr. Curtis is awake?” A voice from across the room. “Mr. Eugene Curtis?” A thick German accent, measured and precise.

  “Yes,” says Bella. “He is.”

  “Good,” says a tall man dressed in a white coat, his eyes framed by circular frameless glasses. A thick reddish mustache covers his upper lip. “May I have a moment with him, Ms…”

  “Analiese Muller.” Bella lets go of my hand and stands to shake the doctor’s. “I’m his girlfriend.”

  “Very well,” says the physician. “I am Doctor Schulhof. I am here to check on Mr
. Curtis here, and give you both an update on his health.”

  “Thank you, doctor,” she says.

  He thumbs an electronic tablet, stopping on a page, then thumbs through another two or three. “We have some good news for you, Mr. Curtis. The bullets passed through your body below your right clavicle, exiting at the interior edge of your scapula. You have slight fractures in both of these bones, which will take some time to heal. However, the vascular injuries were insignificant. I am told that your girlfriend, Ms. Muller, applied pressure to your wounds. That perhaps saved you from losing too much blood.”

  “All good news!” Bella looks exhausted despite the cheer in her voice. I can’t imagine she’s gotten much sleep.

  “Yes,” the doctor concurs. “However, we did find something unusual during an X-ray after you arrived.”

  Bella’s expression changed, as though this is new information she’d not yet heard. “What is it?” she asks.

  “You have had knee surgery, yes?”

  I nod.

  “Above the knee, which contains a lot of scar tissue, there seems to be an implanted device,” he says, looking at the chart as he speaks.

  “What kind of device?” Bella asks.

  “It did not appear to be medically necessary upon a closer inspection.” He looks up from the tablet and addresses me directly. “Are you in the military or do you work for the United States government?”

  I shake my head. “Why?”

  “You have a GPS tracking device in your leg,” he says. “It’s injected into the fatty tissue above the knee. Were you aware of this?”

  Sir Spencer!

  I shake my head.

  “Do you know when someone might have injected or surgically implanted the device into your leg?”

  I shake my head again. But I know. He did it when he drugged me and kidnapped me from that Sixth Street bar in Austin two years ago. It had to be then. He’s known my every move since then.

  A GPS TRACKER IN MY BODY!

  I’m trying to hide what I’m thinking, but Bella senses it. Her hands are pulled to her face, covering her mouth, tears I would have thought had long since run out are again pooling in her eyes.

  “Would you like us to take it out?” asks Doctor Schulhof. “We can do it with very little discomfort. Whoever is keeping track of your whereabouts will no longer be able to do so.”

  “Take it out.” There’s a post-operative rasp in my voice. “I want it out.”

  I want it out because I’m going to find him. I’m going to compel him to tell me what happened to my parents and why he chose to ruin my life. And this time, he won’t see me coming.

  EPILOGUE

  “To take revenge halfheartedly is to court disaster: Either condemn or crown your hatred.”

  —PIERRE CORNEILLE

  Bella’s salty lips are pressed gently against the small entry wound scar between my neck and shoulder. Her damp hair smells like a mix of ocean water and the conditioner she combed into her hair hours earlier.

  “Does it hurt still?” She rests her chin on my chest and looks up at me with a smile. “If it does, I’ll keep kissing it to make it better.”

  “I’m still in a lot of pain.” I admire her beauty through the polarized lenses of my sunglasses. I can feel her throaty giggle against my body and she gives the scar another kiss before sliding up next to me on the sandy blanket.

  “How long has it been since we escaped?” She turns her head to the side as if she’s listening to my heartbeat.

  “Two months.”

  Another North Shore wave crashes against the coral twenty-five feet from the shore of our cove.

  “How long do you think we can hide here?” Bella asks this question every other day. And on the days she doesn’t, she’s thinking it.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” I ask.

  A gust of ocean breeze brushes past us, curling the blanket around our legs.

  “No,” she says. “I just wonder what you’re thinking.”

  “They’ll find us,” I tell her, the truth. “Whether it’s Sir Spencer or the governor’s goons, somebody will eventually show up.”

  “You forgot INTERPOL.”

  “Or INTERPOL.”

  Our violent bread crumbs in Ukraine and Germany are no doubt by now another obstacle to long term peace in the relative solitude of Haleiwa, Hawaii.

  It wasn’t difficult getting out of Germany. With Wolodymyr’s handiwork and a private rental jet, we managed an easy getaway.

  Bella resigned from Nanergetix on a conference call with her board and cashed out. She has a series of accounts in the Caymans and in Switzerland that hold the vast majority of her wealth. Wire transfers, in small, irregular amounts, to an account we share at the Bank of Hawaii have provided plenty of cash for our Spartan existence on Oahu.

  I use the name Richard Denning. Bella’s alias is Peggy Ryan. We borrowed the names from bit actors in the original Hawaii 5-0. Nobody’s noticed.

  We’re renting a small one bedroom guest house for three hundred and fifty dollars a night. At my recommendation, Bella paid cash up front for six months. It’s beachfront and secluded. Bella initially wanted to stay at a high-end resort because of the added security, but she relented when I suggested the paper trail would provide too much exposure.

  Our days are split between scouring the internet, hiking in search of green sea turtles along the heavy deposits of rocks and coral that line the coast, and other, more private pursuits. Despite looking over my shoulder every other second, this is the happiest I’ve been since sipping that tainted beer on Sixth Street nearly two years ago. Bella has all but convinced me to forego vengeance in exchange for anonymity and a relationship with her. We both know our existence here is temporary, though secretly I like to pretend it’s not.

  Bella pushes herself from the blanket and sits with her legs tucked behind her. She’s in a bikini top the color of the Pacific and a white sarong. Her olive skin is tanned a shade darker, her cheeks and nose pink from her refusal to use sunscreen. “You want some lunch? I was thinking Kono’s.”

  Kono’s is a breakfast and lunch joint on Kamehameha Highway not far from our bungalow. We eat there at least twice a week, and it’s the closest we’ve come to assimilating into the culture here. I learned my lesson in San Antonio to avoid patterns of behaviors and public habits.

  However, Kono’s is too good to avoid. The Pig Bomber is an amazing burrito stuffed with kalua pig, rice, caramelized onions, and cheese. I almost forget I have no life when downing it. Bella lives for their coconut cream pie milkshakes. We sit on the bright blue picnic tables outside of the red frame restaurant alongside wild chickens that populate the islands.

  “Sounds good.” I slide my hand onto her thigh. “I haven’t stuffed my face in at least three days.”

  “I’m really craving their waffles,” she admits, “and a milkshake.”

  “Maybe you’re pregnant,” I joke.

  She slaps my chest. “Hush. Not even funny.”

  “You’re right, it’s not.”

  We gather our blanket, shaking the sand downwind, and trek back to the guesthouse. Our feet sink to our ankles in the soft powder, squeaking with each step up the beach. Neither of us says anything until we’ve reached the thick overgrowth of palm and breadfruit trees.

  “You read about Mack?” she asks, squeezing my hand with hers.

  “I did,” I nod. “So he survived after all?”

  “That’s what the article said.” She steps in front of me on the narrowing path toward the house. “He was hospitalized for three weeks, but is being called a miracle man.”

  “Well, when you have a double amputee military veteran survive a violent ‘mugging’ at a popular German tourist attraction, it tends to make news.”

  “He supposedly left Landstuhl after he was stabilized,” she says, stepping onto the wooden staircase that leads to the guesthouse’s second floor entrance. “Now he’s back in the states somewhere.”

  �
��Hiding from Sir Spencer?”

  “Hiding from everyone.” She pulls on the handle and tugs open the door. A cool rush of air greets us, carrying the scent of the pineapple lotion Bella generously applies to herself, and me, after showers. “The article claimed he was suffering from post-traumatic stress and the interview was conducted in an ‘undisclosed’ location.”

  “You forgive him?” I ask, stuffing the blanket into the stacked washing machine next to the kitchenette.

  “I don’t know,” she says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “He tried to kill you. And he probably would have killed me too.”

  “But he didn’t. And you have a history with him.”

  “What’s with you?” she asks, folding her arms across her chest. “All of this forgiveness stuff? It’s not like you.”

  “I don’t know.” I walk over to her and place my hands on her hips, tucking my thumbs into the sarong. “You got me thinking about it.”

  She looks me in the eyes and then brushes some sand from my forehead.

  “You told me that my anger for Sir Spencer only hurts me,” I explain. “You’re right when you call the man a sociopath.”

  “He’s a violent, egomaniacal, manipulative —”

  “I know,” I raise my hands in surrender, taking a step back.

  Bella shrugs. “I’m just saying.”

  “Look, I know my quest to find him before he finds me is self-destructive.”

  “You actually listen to what I say?” she giggles. “I’m flattered.”

  “Every once in a while,” I wink.

  “So we’re finished with trying to exact Hammurabi’s Law?”

  “It’s Hammurabi’s Co—” I stop. “Nevermind. Yes. We’re finished with it.”

  “Until they find us,” she reminds me.

  “I guess,” I sigh, “but we’re prepared.”

  Bella inches toward me to wrap her arms around my back when my newest burner phone vibrates against the granite counter. The caller ID is blocked.