He’d always wondered why Pablo picked the Sheep? He might have an idea now, maybe it was given to him. The rationalizations weren’t over by a long shot, but things were unavoidably pointing to him being God’s new messenger. Matt never wanted that job, or even thought about it until the end of Pablo’s reign, but now it seemed to be inescapable, maybe even his destiny.
He dozed off to an uneasy sleep, no dreams. But when he awoke, his plan was already being put into place by a power that he’d oftentimes questioned, but not anymore.
He looked at his two visitors carefully to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. He timidly croaked out, “Hello, Mr. President,” but the voice wasn’t his normal one, instead it came out weird and uneasy.
* * *
Something happened, something that the authorities weren’t revealing. Sandy was the only one in the world who now knew. James’ parents had passed within a year of each other, so he was the sole keeper of the true knowledge.
Sandy knew that the end was supposed to be a lot more encompassing than this, as James would have not had him so drastically change his life for this. There had to be a lot more. He wasn’t going to use the word “anti-climactic,” but it was damn near that. He felt like he was just about to orgasm in sex, and the Orgasm Police showed up and made him stop right before he came.
He had that damn feeling of emptiness—like a really great baseball game getting called due to rain. One thing he knew for sure, there were always different layers of the truth and different truths based on perspectives. Sandy was convinced that there was no truth involved in this last communication. Never had a case ended so cleanly. One minute the world was heading to the dramatic finish, and the next it was on a totally different path.
The only answer Sandy could come up with was the U.S. got to Pablo. They must have stopped him and then played this obviously doctored video to throw everybody off, to basically take the wind out of their sails. Sandy believed that made sense, but then what happened to Pablo?
His protective instincts flashed to the day he vowed to James to watch out for the boy—and now he felt like a failure. Sandy was concerned that if Pablo really was caught, they were going to do the Gitmo Bay treatment on him. Unless they just killed him.
Sandy didn’t have to worry about money nor food, as he had enough for his lifetime, but he did worry for the boy. No one had ever done such a thing. He took on the world, and as far as Sandy could see, he was winning! Sandy sat and wondered for the millionth time, what went wrong? When you have God on your side, it has to be hard to lose . . .
* * *
Marco was sitting on the stoop of the shanty when a huge Rottweiler approached and stared at him. He fucking hated dogs and slowly slid his hand behind his back, gripping his pistol. “There’s no need for that, amigo, he’s with me.”
He looked up to see João. “Hey! You’re back! You’re alive!”
“Si, Hermano, I’m back and tengo hambre, now take me to some food.”
As he ate and listened to the status report, João heard that things were better than ever. Now that the Reds were gone, they owned the biggest piece on the hill and the Colombians were doing business with them. Life was good. The other ten members that left to Ecuador were the hierarchy of the gang and like a prison gang, Felipe had run this place from the mountain with an iron fist.
Everyday Marco was to give Felipe a street report and a lot of times it required action. Felipe was a good general, but so am I, and now they are all going to report to me until the day Felipe returns, if Felipe returns.
João wondered if his friend still lived. He held out a piece of chicken for the dog. He named him Gringo—and he was one smart fucking dog. He’d never had to tell it anything. It was always at his side now, ready to serve him.
João thought it to be the craziest shit ever, but other than Felipe, this dog was the only friend he’d ever had. The last few weeks had brought them very close, even closer than with the Ants. His fellow Ants weren’t exactly his friends, but they were his people, and someone poisoned them. Now that he had the resources and some greater knowledge of the world, he’d decided he was going to find them and make them pay.
Somehow in his heart, he knew that fucking puto was no messenger of God. Plus Pablo had the whore there, and he was never comfortable with that. He remembered when they brought her in at ten years old. Felipe had let him be the one to break her in, and now she was next to Pablo, acting like a queen instead of the whore they made her. He hated her grown-up face—she was so judgmental.
Pablo ran his game with their gang as the fall guys, and when he knew the pressure was coming, he killed the Ants to make them look like the ones that did it all. That means Felipe is dead and that whore probably killed him. It also means that eventually people will come here seeking answers about the dead video warriors.
Of course, if João ever saw the God Boy or his whore again, they would die painful deaths. Then he thought of the fun he would have engaging the whore. Well, this time, after I’m done with her, I’ll snap her neck like a chicken bone. The muscles in his taut body were unconsciously flexed, especially his jaw, as he imagined getting the chance to break her neck.
Suddenly his gang mate, Carlos, came into the room and in a jubilant act, embraced his long lost compadre. The next thing Carlos knew, he was dragged down to the floor by the shoulder fabric of his shirt and he was face to face with a snarling giant dog. He uttered in sheer terror, “What the fuck, João?!” João bent down and patted his Gringo on the head and said, “No” in a calm voice. The dog stood down and sat staring at Carlos.
“I made a new friend, and apparently he doesn’t like it when people touch me.” He instructed Carlos, “Get off the floor and gather the gang, it’s time for a meeting.”
* * *
The intruder came into the tunnel and started for the entrance of the warehouse. The door sensor picked up the entry and the automated cameras confirmed the breach. Only it wasn’t an individual, it was a team, and they were moving in standard two by two formation.
Matt remotely opened the kennel doors and activated the attack whistle from the intruders’ location in the tunnel, a kind of homing beacon to help them expedite the attack. The tunnels were built with small undetectable speakers throughout so the dogs could hear the whistles from anywhere. This whistle was the one that sent the dogs to the main tunnel. He hit the release on the tunnel doors and his team moved in.
The breach was contained in seconds. The sea of bodies and confusion in the tunnel only added to his team’s advantage, and soon all the enemy combatants were dead. The stand down whistle was blown, the lights go on, and his next team moves in to reward the first team. The padded combatants rise from the dead as Matt comes in. Storm runs to him on command and he rewards him graciously, both verbally and with treats. Another successful dog training session completed.
Just then Felipe came down the tunnel walking like Frankenstein with a hole in his neck and blood running down his chest, staining his white shirt crimson. He was pointing at Matt, and his mouth opened, yet all he was making was a strangled, gurgling sound that was disturbing to hear. But it was the eyes that terrified Matt the most, as they were the eyes of the betrayed showing their condemnation of his actions and damning him to Hell for stopping God’s plan. As Felipe drew closer the gurgling became more terrifying—to the point Matt burst awake from this nightmare.
His heart was racing and he grabbed his nightstand water, drinking it like he was dying of thirst. That was a new one. Damn, now I hate sleeping, his one last reprieve from the pain and guilt was now removed. When he was first kidnapped, he used sleep as a way of passing time in his head.
He’d never had trouble sleeping, but that was when his conscience was fairly clear. Although he had killed, at that point Matt had only killed out of self-preservation, at least the first time, and then out of righteous indignation the second. He never felt guilty about either, although he did feel bad for the agent he killed in the parking
lot. But how was I to know he wasn’t a bad guy? Undercover cops were at a big risk for being shot accidentally, it went with the job.
He sat back and thought about the dogs. Once everything calmed down, the Agency looked for the dogs and found most of them, but not his, of course, as that was the way his luck ran. Until now, his dreams about the dogs were his happy place. Well, not anymore, and he sadly realized that he was like Vera now, with the night terrors. He also realized that he was going to put someone else through this because when he and Jan restart their life today, she was the one going to be the holding the broken person with the night terrors.
What he was afraid of, he didn’t know, he’d already faced hell on earth and survived. God was sending him more messages than an offensive coordinator with two minutes left in the game. He had all this higher purpose around him, yet his instincts were to not become the head of some Earth-changing movement. His instincts tell him to go become Jan’s husband and Jon Jon’s dad.
He wondered if any other people in history have been tapped for Divine Action and ignored it? Whatever happened to the notion that if God ever sent a message it would be once and it would be subtle, you’d really have to look for it. Now God was tapping him on the shoulder like a three year old wanting a cookie. Or was He?
This was how those two got into the trouble they did, by convincing themselves it was real. So many things that he thought was the reality of this world have turned out not to be. He had been putting in a great deal of time lately contemplating and trying to figure out how to do God’s bidding, but in a way that might be more God-like, some way other than the stalwart tactics of his former captors.
The clock read 5:15 am and he wondered how much longer this was going to go on? He was going to have to find an early morning hobby real soon. One can only run so far and this staring at the ceiling thing was getting to be a real drag. He sure missed his dog, and if God really wanted to send him a message of faith and love, then He would send Storm back to his owner in one piece.
He got up and faced the mirror, a thing he avoided as of late. He looked at the one whistle he had kept. It was Storm’s “protect” whistle. He always wore it on a chain around his neck in memory of his dog. If Matt blew that, Stormy would die at his side before he ever left it.
He looked at the man in the mirror and he supposed he could live with him. He’d made some hard decisions and he’d done some things that needed to be forgiven, both in the Church and in his own family.
Today was the day he was going to go to Jan. He’d been denying himself thoughts of her for so long as a survival technique and coping mechanism, that now he was deathly afraid he wouldn’t be able to recapture those feelings. They once had chemistry, but Matt wondered, is it still there? He’d seen recent pictures of Jan, thanks to Ray. They’d both physically changed in two years. She looked a lot hotter with longer hair, but the eyes gave away the heart. It was shattered.
Matt had lost his baby fat and became a hardened fighter. He realized early on that his body was really his temple more than ever, and he took the task on with vigor. Having both a gym and a gun range at the compound, he spent time there each and every day. He looked at his abs in the mirror. He’d never had abs for Jan. Vera loved them and would run her fingers over them again and again post coitus. When am I going to stop doing that?
He had to be really careful not to do that verbally around his wife. It was like he was having an affair, only the girl was dead by his hands. He put on his running attire and hit the road from where he parked his car.
The sun was just rising somewhere in the East, and its first hint of light was glowing over the mountains near Fremont or San Jose. How beautiful. His thought hit before he could stop himself. It was the same thought he had upon gazing at the Andes, both in his sedated state en route to the helicopter and in his vivid dream. How beautiful. Matt knew it really was God before all things, he knew he was fighting a losing battle in his current state of denial. He believed in God, and all this had to be more than sheer coincidence. It had to be.
When he was a teenager he’d run from this very spot, and on mornings just like this, he’d seen that same sunrise a hundred times. He’d always thought that he felt closer to God in these moments than he did in church.
Before his run started, he decided right then and there, standing in front of his old high school that he would abide by allowing this all a place in his reality. He was going to do what was being asked, but on his own terms. He wasn’t going to bolt into action, and he was never going to be at a point where he would allow himself the kind of mindset where even one person was expendable.
He’d listened to all the old broadcasts now, and he’d heard Pablo give the statement or more like the challenge “to name a time in history that a madman had to be stopped and the innocent were spared.”
Matt knew that that was the problem with being at the top. Sacrifices always had to be made, and he wasn’t the guy for hard decisions anymore. He’d paid his dues in that department. So all of God’s little messages may be right, but unless that “other way” came to him or The Almighty would like to spell it out, he was going to go on with his life as usual.
Stretched and warm, he headed out through the neighborhood he’d grown up in, letting it all wash over him in a cathartic trot down memory lane. He ran 3.5 miles, a run he knew well as it was the exact mileage he had to practice for the year he pursued cross-country in an effort to letter in three sports.
He crossed by his elementary school, church, and first girlfriend’s house. He felt himself returning with every step. He looked at his watch, it was 6:54. He had half a mile left so he quickened his pace. He saw the field where he got into his first fight in the fourth grade. It was with a bully that picked on the wrong kid and he easily won his first fight.
Suddenly a deer shot out at the back of the field and up the hillside. He’d probably seen that a hundred times in his life as well. Another buried thought came up, Deer Season. That’s something he hadn’t even allowed himself to think of the whole time he’d been gone. Those trips were the closest times he’d ever had with his dad.
As he pushed through a stitch in his side, Matt remembered when he was twelve and his dad woke him up one morning to go fishing. They left on this supposed fishing trip to a local lake, only this trip was really to his friend’s private ranch down in Gilroy, their first ever secret from mom.
It was damn near six thousand acres, and his dad showed him how to hunt. Don got a buck on that trip, and Matt was hooked. His friend ate the meat, so it wasn’t just for sport. It took several outings, but Matt finally got a buck too—not a trophy buck, but a deer nonetheless.
His run ended at 361 Mountain Terrace Drive at 6:59. Matt used to leave at 6:30 every Saturday morning and try to beat his dad getting the paper at 7:00, which was Don’s normal habit. He was panting and out of breath, with his hands on his sides walking it off when he looked up the driveway and said with all the familiarity of a separation of minutes not years, “Hey Dad . . .”
* * *
Ray turned the screen off and closed Matt’s file—enough for one day. The clock read 8:45 pm, a good time to break off. Of course, the only reason almost nine o’clock was a good time to end his day was he was single. Not that he didn’t find the opposite sex attractive, but it seemed they just didn’t find him mate worthy.
He was average in stature at five nine and a hundred and fifty pounds. A lot of women outweighed him nowadays though and that reduced the playing field. He looked at his office photos showing all the places he’d been. He always saw himself as so homely. It didn’t help that he always wore his black square rimmed glasses. It was not lost on him that every other person he worked with had their offices adorned with pictures of a smiling wife and kids. Ray glanced around his office and not one of his photos had a significant other in it.
Although he did have a picture of himself and Steven Hawking, which in his world would be hard to top even with a family photo. Matt
Hurst had gone places with love and the human emotion that he would never know. From a psychological point of view, it’s ill-fated to only be able to see into the bubble, but not be part of it, to not even to have lived a small part of it to draw experience from.
He thought back to his almost high school girlfriend, the closest he’d ever come. She was in his Trig class junior year and she fell in love with his mind. Her name was Lisa Needham and he really thought it was going to be easy with girls after meeting her. The girl obviously liked him so much as she would just stare and stare at him, sometimes it seemed for an entire class.
Every time he looked over her way he’d caught her staring. Daily he was gaining the courage to ask her out. Then one day she didn’t show up for school and Ray was concerned, so by day four he started asking around to find out what happened to her? It took a day before he found a girl who worked at the school newspaper with her. Apparently Lisa’s dad was in construction and he up and moved them over the previous weekend, just like that.
Ray was devastated, “Moved them where?” he asked the girl.
“Portland, Oregon,” was the reply that ruined his junior year of high school. By senior year he’d finally got over it and made up his mind to move on, but no one else ever seemed to have the same interest in him again. Sure he found her and they wrote, but by the middle of his senior year the letters stopped. Not even a kiss or a held hand to remember her by, just her shampoo smell.
They were in a group studying one day and Lisa had ended up wearing the baseball cap he’d left sitting on a table. She was just joking around, wearing it all crooked and acting silly, but after he got it back it had her scent on it. He slept with that ball cap on his pillow for a week until the scent dissipated.
And the Meek Shall Inherit (Harbinger of Change Book 2) Page 22