Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  SHEEP DOG AND THE WOLF

  A Story of Terrorism and Response, and the Sheep Dogs Who Protect

  CARL DOUGLASS

  Neurosurgeon Turned Author Writes with Gripping Realism

  PO Box 221974 Anchorage, Alaska 99522-1974

  books@publicationconsultants.com—www.publicationconsu1tants.com

  ISBN 978-1-59433-396-5

  eBook ISBN 978-1-59433-397-2

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2013-940674

  Copyright 2013 Carl Douglass

  —First Edition—

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in any form, or by any mechanical or electronic means including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, in whole or in part in any form, and in any case not without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Dedication

  To all Sheep Dogs

  Other books by Carl Douglass

  • LAST PHOENIX, A Story of the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Viet Nam; A Story of Betrayal and Revenge

  • SAGA OF A NEUROSURGEON, a Novel in Six Books

  THE YOUNG COYOTE: Garven Wilsonhulme’s Way to Success—No Quarter Asked and None Given

  ANYTHING GOES

  HEAVEN AND HELL: Garven Wilsonhulme Takes on All Comers in the Jungle of Modern Competition

  THE LONG CLIMB: Young M.D., Garven Wilsonhulme, Engaged in a Social Poker Game of Winner Takes All

  ACADEMIA: LAW OF THE JUNGLE: Surgeon in Training, Garven Wilsonhulme, Fang-and-Claw Competition for Glory

  THE VULTURE AND THE PHOENIX: Neurosurgeon, Garven Wilsonhulme, the Final Great Fight

  • ALL IN JEST: Renowned Neurosurgeon in the Fight of Her Life

  • GOG AND MAGOG. Yawm al-Qiyamah, Yawn al-Din, The Day of Judgment

  • FINDERS KEEPERS, LOSERS WEEP: A Novel of Innocence Betrayed and the Search for Restitution

  William J. Bennett said in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy on November 24, 1997 that one Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said, ‘Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident or under extreme provocation—the regular people in society who go about their lives unaware of those who protect them or what they do. ‘Then there are the wolves,’ the old war veteran was quoted as saying, ‘the criminals, foreign enemies, and terrorists; and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy. There are evil men in this world, and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.’

  “Then there are sheepdogs,” Bennett went on, “I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.” Bennett told the midshipmen about a sign in one California law enforcement agency, ‘We intimidate those who intimidate others.’”

  PROLOGUE

  Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.

  —Arthur Miller

  Early January

  In the aftermath, he hit the light switch and bathed his small room in L’Ermitage Sacre Couer with a shock of light. His chest was heaving from his exertions of the last few moments; his muscles ached; and he was confused at what had just happened and about the implications of the attack. His was an orderly mind and one that needed plausible answers. He knew he had been careful and was as certain as he could be that he had not been followed to the hotel. His brain cleared as his adrenaline rush subsided. He forced himself to think, to piece together everything that had just happened.

  There was not that much to remember: He had been asleep—in that level of sleep below REM, beyond dreaming—benefiting from the deep levels of worry free restorative slumber. The hotel window behind its drawn drapes had suddenly crashed inward, and only with his finely-toned reflexive instincts had he saved himself by throwing his sleep benumbed body over the edge of the bed away from the window as the bullets from a silencer-muffled 9 mm automatic stitched a trail up the length of the mattress where he had been outstretched less than a second or two before.

  The shooter had come up the fire escape from the well-lighted street five stories below intent on assassinating the sleeper—the wiry, late middle-aged agent code-named “Sheep Dog”—who was making a small contribution to his country’s security. In a former life, that man had been a businessman with a family. That life was now irretrievably in the past.

  The slender, lithe, well trained professional killer—secure with the knowledge that the element of surprise was in the intruder’sthe aggressor’s—favor had smashed the way into the hotel bed room that was as dark as the bottom of a mine shaft. The shooter’s young eyes had not adjusted to the blackness of the room as fast as Sheep Dog’s reflexes had propelled him from the bed. The shooter had only a portion of a second to bemoan the fact that he had not been wearing night vision goggles.

  The intruding killer moved with the speed of a leopard toward the side from which the sound of Sheep Dog’s body landing on the carpeted floor had come. Sheep Dog balled himself up at the foot of the bed. The shooter whirled around the edge of the mattress and stumbled headlong over Sheep Dog’s spring-coiled figure. Two more rounds pumped out of the silenced end of the gun as the would-be killer pitched toward the floor. Sheep Dog had three advantages now. The muzzle blast had momentarily blinded the shooter to the darkness in the room, and he was now badly off balance. And he was now in an equal battle with a consummate fighter and killer. Sheep Dog executed a smooth uncoiling to envelope the shooter’s flailing legs which brought him the advantage of being prone on the shooter’s back. He moved swiftly up the shooter’s body and pinioned the intruder’s gun arm before the shooter could turn back and fire. Two more shots spat out of the gun impotently into the side of the mattress.

  Hunter and hunted locked in a deadly embrace. Sheep Dog knew that he had won when he realized how slightly built his attacker was. He lay on the intruder’s back like a coiling anaconda inexorably squeezing the life out of its victim. Despite the attacker’s violent struggles, Sheep Dog had been able to hook his feet around the attacker’s shins and his right arm around the slim neck. He tucked his head against the side of the attacker’s head and brought his left arm up to finish the slow death choke—the mata leão [kill the lion]. Sheep Dog patiently squeezed with all his might. His breathing slowed down and became more nearly normal. The attacker’s struggles waned as the estrangulamento robbed the blood supply, then the critical oxygen supply to the attacker’s brain. The struggles became feeble, then finally ceased. Sheep Dog released his compressing hold gradually and listened carefully to the attacker’s breathing.

  “Buon dormo,” [Sleep well] he had whispered soothingly, using the Portuguese of his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu masters.

  Wary that the attacker could have been playing possum, Sheep Dog had slowly begun to remove his arms from around the man’s slim neck. His overworked imagination heard soft regular breathing. But there was no reaction, no movement. Sheep Dog let go slowly and cautiously. There was no response, no counter-attack. He grabbed the attacker’s chin roughly in one hand and his occiput in the other and lifted sharply upward. There was still no reaction. Sheep Dog had then made a sudden violent lifting and twisting motion of a coup de grâce and heard the bones high and deep in the neck crack as loud as if he had broken a base-ball bat. The attacker’s head canted at an impossible angle. Sheep Dog eased up on both hands and took the attacker’s shoulders in his hands and shook violently. The thin muscular intruder’s head moved independent of its body in a way that could only occur with a complete disconnection of the head and neck.

  It was over. Less than fifteen seconds earlier Sheep Dog
had been sound asleep. He became aware of his rapid cardiac rhythm pounding in his chest. Now that he could think, it occurred to him that there could be others. He scooped his Sig-Sauer Glock 9 mm from under his pillow and moved silently to the broken window. He peered outside from the window’s edge quickly and then moved back out of sight again. No one. He stepped hurriedly to the hotel room door and peered out through the peep hole in the hotel door. The limited view indicated no one in the hallway. He undid the two chain locks and the bolt lock as quietly as possible and flung open the door and scrutinized the poorly lit hallway holding his Glock in a two-handed FBI crouch swinging it side-to-side. The hallway was empty. He closed the door, bolt locked it again, and re-attached the two chain locks.

  Sheep Dog flicked on the hotel’s room lights and was momentarily dazzled, but he moved swiftly to the side of the inert body of his would-be assailant. The slim figure was dressed in a one piece mat-black stretch nylon body suit, a thin Kevlar vest, a ski mask that showed only open dead eyes now, and black lace-up fighter’s shoes with thick rubber soles. A black commando knife was attached to a heavy black web belt buckled tightly to the slender waist. Another, shorter, double-edged dagger was attached to the right ankle; and a sub-compact, semiautomatic 7 round magazine, .22 LR Beretta Bobcat in a concealed weapon holster was attached to the opposite ankle. He examined the larger handgun that had come too close to ending his life. It was a well-used 9 mm Belgian Fabrique National (FN) High Power contract manufactured pistol originally designed and made by Browning. The ID numbers had been expertly removed. Sheep Dog ejected the magazine and examined the bullets—VBR Belgium armor piercing projectile technology. He shivered a little.

  “Loaded for bear,” Sheep Dog whispered to himself. “Somebody was right serious.”

  His attacker was dead, and now Sheep Dog needed answers. Who knew about him? He did not believe in coincidences; this was no B&E gone wrong. Who wanted him dead? Specifically—and right now—who was after him? There were plenty of the compatriots of his own victims who would want him dead, but there was no reason to think that any of them—on their own—could have traced him to this country, to this hotel, during this night. He contemplated the answers and came up with a very disturbing train of thought.

  He unsnapped and removed the attacker’s Kevlar vest—a NATO Level IV Ballistic Vest with imbedded ceramic trauma plates—unzipped the sheathlike black suit and began to search the corpse thoroughly. His search produced two shocks. The first came immediately when he removed the ski mask from his victim’s head. The attacker was a woman—young, attractive, and blond. The second came after he failed to find any identification in the pocket-less clothing. He removed her shoes and tore out the insoles. There he found a photo identification card which shocked him with its familiarity. The name meant nothing to him, but the card had been issued by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America. Sheep Dog numbly put the ID card on the room desk top reacting as if he had been struck a violent blow to the center of his sternum. He was momentarily afraid that he would faint. He was a hunter who had become the hunted, and he was going to have to go dissect every event in his history with the Company to find his mistake; and, if he was going to survive, he could never make another one. He mentally kicked himself for not having the good sense to immobilize the attacker and to have extracted all the information she possessed that could have led to her masters. He had a highly honed skill set for extracting information from the reluctant, and it was useless to him now.

  He took mental stock of his situation. His cover was blown. He had been betrayed. He was obligated to think the unthinkable. Only two people on earth knew his identity and his present location, and he had trusted each of them with his very life. One of them had been his friend for thirty years. Sheep Dog hated the implication of the evidence before him, but it was impossible to formulate an alternative that made any sense. Until a week ago, those two men had his back. A week ago, he had had two other men to whom he could turn for help. Now, there was no safety net for him—no one to call. Now, he was entirely alone; and the world had become infinitely more hostile.

  PREDATOR AND HIS PREY

  CHAPTER ONE

  November, the year before

  Camille and Genevieve bounded across the Jambo House Deluxe Villa to crash into their grandfather’s hard legs and were deftly swept up into his arms and held aloft in his wiry powerful upper limbs. The game was so often repeated that the twin two year old girls squealed their delight at being tickled and frightened by their precarious positions.

  Their grandma, Rosie, playing her required protective role, exclaimed as usual, “Put those kids down, Hunter Caulfield! You’re going to break one of their necks, and then won’t you be the sorry one?”

  Hunter laughed. “Yes dear, just as you say,” he said with a serious face and a mock chastened look.

  His twinkling eyes said otherwise. He put down the little blond troublemakers and gave each of them an affectionate pat on their diapered behinds that propelled them into the kitchen. Hunter moved quickly to his eldest grandson, Evan—age ten—and put him into a headlock and dragged the squawking boy into the kitchen. The rest of the family had already assembled at the table. Four year old Daniel, twenty-six year old Daniel, Sr. and his wife, Marie—young Daniel’s mother and father and Hunter and Rosie’s son and daughter-in-law—and Stephen and Donna—parents of Camille, Genevieve, and Eva—were dutifully seated at the breakfast table where a pot of steaming oatmeal full of whipped cream, brown sugar, and raisins waited. Donna was Hunter and Rosie’s only living daughter. Their first daughter—Donna’s elder sister, Pat—died in a car crash twenty-nine years ago, just after Hunter came home from Viet Nam.

  Hunter had doted on, spoiled, and overprotected, his beautiful curly-haired blond daughter, Donna, throughout her life and had only relinquished her to Stephen Grandel when she was twenty-two; and Hunter was finally convinced that Donna was madly in love with the young man and that he was going to be as successful a young neurosurgeon as he was a resident at Johns Hopkins. Hunter and Rosie expressed their gratitude to God every day that Dr. Grandel was loving and fully supportive of his trophy wife in all of her rather dubious extra-curricular activities.

  With the permissive upbringing Donna had experienced and the fully happy childhood they had provided, she was a brashly confident and very competent young wife and mother. She was an extreme-sport junkie and her parents complained regularly that she was in no position to put herself at such risk what with her marital and maternal responsibilities. Her husband smiled indulgently whenever the subject came up, and Hunter and Rosie shrugged in capitulation as they had done throughout Donna’s privileged childhood and adolescence. For all of her daredevil character, she had developed an admirably stringent Protestant work ethic. She had an MBA from Princeton and a PhD in mining engineering from MIT. She had a great job with Consolidated Mines and could have supported her family quite without the meager salary Stephen brought home from his residency position. She was also a marathoner with an enviable record—and a parachutist, scuba diver, and free-hand mountain climber with an anxiety provoking list of broken bones. Her family, friends, business associates, and competitors all admired most her sparkling personality and quirky sense of humor.

  The rest of the family found their places at the table. Daniel, Sr.—the Caulfield family scion—was the religious one of the family, having converted to the Mormon Churchlargely to please his wife-to-be Marie. He later developed a convert zealot’s annoying immersion in his new religion. Hunter had a live-and-let-live approach to religion and was more amused than annoyed by his son’s surprising choice since Hunter and Rosie had pretty much left religion up to their two children’s choices as adults. Daniel had become a High Priest and a member of his local bishopric while his daredevil sister had become a quietly unobtrusive atheist. Marie had decided to join her husband in his somewhat pushy zeal for the church that she had taken more-or-less for granted before her marriag
e and Daniel’s conversion. Marie was a rather plain young woman, but had blossomed into a church leader in the women’s and children’s organizations of her church once she had become activated.

  “Say grace, please, Daniel,” Hunter asked. At family gatherings, Daniel did almost all of the praying—both public and private—for the rest of them. He nodded an okay to his dad.

  “Father in heaven, we thank thee for this fine meal and for the hands that provided and prepared it. Bless the food that it will nourish and sustain us through the day and help us to do good. Bless our family and keep us safe and free from illness, harm, or accident today. Bless the missionaries in the field and our armed forces that they, too, will be safe. Watch over those who are in harm’s way to protect us and our liberties. Help the missionaries to find the pure in heart. These and all other blessings we pray for in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ, amen.”

  Hunter gritted his teeth slightly at the “pure in heart” reference knowing that his son was targeting him to take the missionary lessons which Hunter—the paterfamilias—had thus far gracefully dodged.

  “Sorry, but I pretty much pooped out after a full day of rides and junk food yesterday at the Epcot Center, and I have to get some work done today.” Hunter said after the prayer. “What’s on the agenda?”

  “Granpa, you have to come. Nobody else will take me on the tilt-a-whirl.” Evan pleaded.

  “Sorry, big grandson, that’ll have to wait until tomorrow when we hit Tomorrow Land and Fantasy Land. We still have most of a week to do all of those throw-up rides again. Give me a little rest, okay?”

  Evan frowned.

  “You can join us at noon, dear,” Rosie said. “We have the Crystal Palace on Main Street, U.S.A. scheduled for the whole family for lunch. We’re going to meet the Swensons and their kids for their little Katrina’s third birthday party. You can’t miss it.”