'A' for Argonaut

by Michael J. Stedman

  ‘A’ FOR ARGONAUT

  Michael J. Stedman

  ‘A’ for Argonaut

  Michael J. Stedman

  © Copyright 2012 Michael J. Stedman.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Clipper Trade Books

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  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  For more information about this book visit: www.michaeljstedman.com

  Edition ISBNs

  Trade Paperback 978-0-9856477-0-4

  E-book 978-0-9856477-1-1

  First Edition 2012

  This electronic edition was prepared by

  The Editorial Department

  7650 E. Broadway, #308, Tucson, Arizona 85710

  www.editorialdepartment.com

  Cover design by Pete Garceau

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events herein are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedicated to

  Barbara, my brilliant wife,

  our three sons, Michael, Scott, Daniel,

  and their wonderful families.

  In memory of Jimmy Fuller

  Fraternity brother, worthy American

  Died: December 21, 1988

  Lockerbie

  PROLOGUE

  Castle Island, South Boston, Massachusetts

  MACK, KEEP YOUR PROMISE. Now! Mack. Mack Maran!

  Amber Chu pleaded for the first time in her young life.

  Moonlight rays streaked through the summer storm clouds, bathing South Boston’s Old Harbor in spectral patches. Lightning brightened the pitch black with intermittent flashes. Thunder broke the silence of the night. The rain fell in torrents; water poured from spouts on the granite bastion corners of the pentagonal old Fort Independence.

  The fort was at the center of an island, surrounded by a seaside park and Pleasant Bay, a section of Boston Harbor, now attached to the mainland by a causeway at the end of Day Boulevard. The only route on or off was by that road or by sea.

  This late at night, the area was deserted. Even the private security force that policed the buildings along the docks was on a skeleton shift, Friday before a long weekend. Vangaler sat in the driver’s seat as they pulled into the parking lot. One of the killers sat in front with him; the other two bracketed Amber Chu in the back seat. A bit chunky, she qualified as ripe with an Afro-Asian complexion accented by crimson lip gloss. The one Vangaler called Ace had the top of her evening gown stripped to her waist. They were ripping off the rest of her dress when Vangaler stopped the car.

  She felt helpless. It was a feeling she hadn’t had since that day twenty-two years earlier as an eleven-year-old in Luanda, Angola. They had surrounded her in an alley behind her school, three boys with evil in their eyes. The thugs would never forget her exacting response, nor the pain of their ruptured testicles.

  “Stay still, you bitch,” Ace said as he joined the other man groping her breasts and ripping her sequined blue gown. They had already torn off the costume diamond necklace.

  Enough.

  She choked, forcefully gagged, tightening her stomach with all the technique at her disposal, and projectile vomited all over Ace’s face.

  “You fuck!” he screamed. He flew out the door wiping frantically at the undigested mess that covered his face and chest.

  It was all the opportunity she needed. She flew out the door behind him. Before he could react, she was on the attack.

  “Kiai!” she shouted as she leveraged herself on one leg and delivered a hammer kick with a straight-leg to Ace’s throat, felling him.

  “Help me! Is anybody here?” Amber screamed as she lifted the hem of her blue gown and ran headlong towards the high security fence, a possible escape route.

  Near naked, her tawny skin glistened under the watery glow of the security lights. The blonde wig flipped off and the wet shanks of her coal-black hair unfurled behind her, while her cries sank under the torrents of rain and the crash of the surf on the granite seawall. Lost. Lost in the fury of the storm.

  She had kicked off her high heels, raced with all the power in her legs. Barefoot, her feet trailed blood, cut from the broken bottle strewn path; her legs and arms burned with abrasions caused by the brutal treatment from the violent men. Although she was a competitor, an athlete as a student in Cabinda, Angola, she was afraid she would fail in this race for life. The remnants of her satin, slashed into blue spiral ribbons, trailed like an ethereal cape, brilliant against the moon-washed puddles.

  Her breaths shortened, her lungs tightened.

  One of the men in the gang yelled.

  “Stop, Amber! Ons gaan jou nie seermaak nie. Ons wil jou help!”

  She understood.

  Afrikaans! “Amber, stop! We won’t hurt you. We want to help.”

  She knew how desperately someone threatened with such horror might grasp at any promise of deliverance. She also knew her personal charms wouldn’t get her out of this one. If anything, they were what got her into it when it all began.

  So long ago now.

  On the near hill above, the team of tuxedoed African assassins ran across the grass, fanning out from the Revolutionary War fortress. Automatic weapons fired, bullets chipping the stone wall, clanging off its old cast iron rail that rimmed above the breaker rocks and their splashing seawater waves. One of the beasts stopped to snap in a loaded clip while the other three closed the gap.

  Strangely, she remembered words from her youth, words uttered famously by the black American baseball player, Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back, the bastards will catch you.” She could see the vision of Antonio, her seven-year-old son in front of her, guiding, urging her speed. She strained her legs, pumped ahead through the pain. Now the chain links of the fence were right there.

  Cargo depot! Dock Security! Guards!

  The men were gaining. Hulks, knuckle-draggers. Their shoes wouldn’t help them on the fence. On the chain links, her agility would give her the advantage she needed.

  A rock! She tripped. A flash from a halogen flashlight illuminated her, blinded her when she glanced back, unable to resist. They were so close.

  On the hill, the one with the gun took aim again. She rolled out of the fall onto her feet, charged ahead. She’d survived Cabinda, Kinshasa, Antwerp, and now she was determined to survive this.

  A shot. She launched into the air and stretched her arms with every ounce of her strength. Rusty fence wire ripped her delicate palms. Her bloodied hands slipped.

  My grip! I can’t!

  She scarcely noticed the pain as she clawed her way to the top.

  The killers were at the foot of the fence now. They shook the links violently. She clung for her life, stretched, reached for the top. In seconds, she’d be over and free.

  The one with the gun ran down the hill.

  The top‌—‌YES! I can do it!

  Instead of razor wire, the fence was topped with an aluminum strap.

  She was there. Her hand opened, gripped the strap.

  “NO!” she screamed.

  Blue arcs zapped like lightning from the straps. They sent an electric charge through her body that burnt off her eyebrows, singed her hair. Pain rippled from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. The stench penetrated her nostrils. Her body was flung like a doll from the top of the fence. It landed, limp, at the feet of the men.

  INSIDE THE OLD F
ORTRESS, in a cell that had been used as an arsenal for gunpowder by the revolutionaries in the American War of Independence, the three men moved hypnotically around a large, white circle they had drawn on the concrete floor with a can of spray paint.

  Slang Vangaler was clearly the leader, short and lumpy with hulking shoulders and limp hands. He was dressed formally in black tie and wore black patent dress shoes. His teeth gleamed eerily in the firelight. The other men were also dressed for their earlier fake roles as orchestral musicians. Telltale rolls of ropy flesh at the back of their necks strained against the fabric of their collars. The muscles under those rolls indicated a tough regimen of military, not musical, training. Joseph Kwa Njebe, Vangaler’s lieutenant, was a giant, like his superior, a former mercenary from C-10, the notorious torture unit at Vlaakplaas, the old South African Defense Force’s Apartheid-era prison complex.

  They were engaged in a quick devil-worship ceremony used by Vangaler as a control mechanism over his minions. He prided himself on his macabre rituals, most of which he picked up on dagga-and-booze-soaked nights watching “Secrets of Santeria” on A&E Cable TV.

  A man lay spread out on the ground in the center of the circle, hands tied behind his back, mouth duct-taped, eyes wide. He wore the uniform of a security guard from the dock storage facility at the port. A pool of blood flowed beneath him from a series of razor cuts across his wrists and arms.

  “This will be a sign to Lt. Colonel Mack Maran,” Vangaler said to Njebe, grinning through the jeweled gold dental grills that lined his chrome teeth.

  “Reg, baas,” the Gargantua answered in Afrikaans. “OK, boss,” he agreed, looking back at Vangaler.

  “Ons is hier.”

  “Here we are,” Vangaler chanted.

  “Ons is tog hier om die diamante van Mbuji-Mayi to beskerm,” Njebe responded. “We are here to defend the sacred diamonds of Mbuji-Mayi, yes.”

  He raised his head. His body began to shake. The men followed, repeating the chant together like automatons, chillingly reverberating echoes bouncing off a faraway cliff. Njebe had learned the language after being captured by the South African Defense Force in Namibia decades earlier. All the followers were impressed with the sacred language of the occult spoken only by their holy leaders of the dark.

  Closing his icy eyes in rapture, Vangaler continued his chant. Then he stepped into the next granite-walled cell within the Revolutionary War fortress and out, down the embankment to the compactor.

  THE TATTOO BEAT OF the downpour was all around Amber Chu. It rapped off the steel body of the industrial-sized open-topped waste compactor just outside the fortress, pinged off the coffee cans and empty beer bottles, drilled on the newspapers and candy wrappers. It seeped through the rotted refuse that blanketed her. She shuddered, gasped, her weakened breath pulsated against the heavy refuse that crushed against her smarting, inflamed lungs. The stink sickened her, forcing more vomit out of her mouth.

  Waterfront rats rustled through the garbage. She could hear them as they ate leftover submarine sandwiches and pizza pieces that had been tossed by the dockworkers at lunch twelve hours earlier. Tied at her hands and feet, pinned like a mummy beneath the debris that had been heaped on her, Amber found it impossible to move. One of the rodents slithered up to lick a residue of wine that dripped from a bottle that stabbed the back of her neck as her head jammed against it. She struggled hopelessly against her restraints, against the crushing garbage. Outside, the killers had come down from the fort. She could hear them chanting Vangaler’s mock mantras. She also heard a soft clicking sound coming from the side of the compactor.

  “Bye, bye, asswipe. Let this be a lesson to your friend.”

  Outside the compactor, Vangaler worked the screwdriver on the end of his pocketknife into the plug of the wafer-tumbler cylinder lock on the compactor’s side-mounted control panel. He put just enough pressure on the pins inside the plug to free the lock as they fell into place.

  He pushed the panel’s red power button activating the machine.

  No! It can’t end like this. I’ve come too far, fought too hard to be taken for granted like a piece of trash. NO! Not here. I’m NOT going to die in here. I’m not trash. They are trash. GARBAGE! Mack. Help me! Mack. Mack Maran. Please. Tony‌—‌Tony, my precious, my son.

  It was her last thought before the huge crusher began to grind. Its motor strained against the resistance‌—‌her body. The thick steel piston pressed on, breaking a gallon wine bottle that lay near her head. Broken shards of glass sliced her scalp. Blood seeped through the remnants of her once elegant gown, soaking her lacy bra.

  “Skiet die teef! Waste the bitch!” Vangaler said, smiling hideously at the men gathered around him.

  Withdrawing the cell phone from its holster, clipped to one side of his cummerbund, he dialed Congo-Kinshasa.

  ONE

  Fort Bragg, home of the U.S. Special Action Warfighter Command‌—‌Months earlier

  Disgraced and now Ex-Army Lieutenant Colonel Mack Maran stepped out into the sunlight. He was tall with steeply sloped shoulders. His clean-shaven face was grim under a head of closely-cropped but still curly chestnut hair. The square jaw, hooked nose, and cocoa skin made people wonder if that face originated somewhere in the Mediterranean East or North Africa sometime in the distant past.

  He pushed the sunglasses up on the bridge of his nose.

  Behind him, the new, brick-faced Fort Bragg Courthouse with its tall, pediment-capped portico and four Roman pillars, loomed like a mammoth symbol built to reflect the standing and dignity of American military justice. Hands shaking, Maran stuffed the manila folder under one arm. It contained a dismissal from the United States Army for “Other Than Honorable Conditions.”

  Questions still haunted him.

  It was six weeks now. Had he really led his men to their deaths in the raid or had he been betrayed by the generals? If so, had he joined an institution that had become so corrupt that it would sacrifice one of its most loyal devotees for power and profit? His fear congealed to anger, then to hate, stoked by utter shame. His face felt like hot wax. If he could peel his skin off like a mask, he would don a new face. For the first time in his life, he wanted not to be himself. Anyone! A librarian, a bookkeeper, a longshoreman‌—‌anyone but a disgraced soldier. He had always been on the side of the good guys. Now the unimaginable had become plausible. Now the world, his world, which always had structure, may actually have had no order, no code, and now, no purpose. The facts belied all he believed in and had relied on for most of his life. He felt as if he were standing on the rim of a cliff‌—‌below him, a pit of madness.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a half-smoked Parodi stogie. He lit up, cupping the Zippo. His brow wrinkled. He wondered if it was a Chinese fake, another U.S. economy-crippling knock-off. He took a drag. Usually he just kept the lighter with the unofficial SAWC crossed-bayonet insignia on hand for lighting up friends. Now he looked around in the vain hope that he would spot one of them. On the outside, he looked like any soldier waiting for a ride. Inside, alone at the top of the granite steps, he shook with rage. In front of him stood “Bronze Bruce,” the 22-foot high statue of the Special Warfare Soldier, the symbolic heart of the Army Special Operations Command. Though he could not see the inscription on the base, he knew what it said: “He offers a gentle hand of friendship to the oppressed of the world…He is the perfect warrior…a healer, a teacher, and an opponent of evil.”

  Now he wondered what those words really meant. The thought ignited a memory. A sickening memory.

  Sean Callanan! Déjà vu.

  It was another incident, almost precisely like his own humiliating court-martial, where an innocent American patriot was framed and then trashed by his superiors. Sean Callanan at the CIA had been a friend for years; he had served his country with honors until his superiors at the CIA, spurred on by an ass-covering FBI foray, made his life a living hell.

  When a dozen Russian agents working for the U.S. disapp
eared in Moscow, the “Community” knew they had a mole in the house. They turned on Callanan, ignoring his distinguished career and dismissing him from his duties in disgrace. For twenty-one months they trailed his every step, bugged his phones, and threatened to prosecute him for a capital offense. He was cleared when a Russian defector gave up the real traitor in the FBI.

  Maran knew Callanan would understand his situation if he were alive, but he had been felled by a fatal stroke.

  He thought of the dress saber Ae Sook had bought for him. He wondered whether he was now honor-bound to take it down. He’d hung it over the mantle of his bachelor quarters home on the Bragg compound. He had kept it there in honor of his son’s memory. Dennis had always been proud of what it represented. The sense of his son’s presence triggered a pang of sadness. The memories made his eyes sting. He took off the Oakley SI Ballistic Frame sunglasses briefly and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Flipping the cigar stub onto the steps, he ground it out with the sole of one of his bloused paratrooper boots. He gripped his aluminum crutches tightly. He looked out across the parade field. No one was waiting for him. How could there be? Not one of his military pals even knew what had happened to him or where he was. Outside of them, no one else mattered. The Army had been his life. Now he was on his own for the first time in twenty years. His legs throbbed. His head felt like a bell tower at noon. His skull fractures were healing, but he feared the panic attacks the doctors had warned him about. He gripped the crutches so hard his fingers bruised. He shook his head clear, then used all the strength he had to straighten his back.

  The Fort Bragg compound stretched in front of him, its barracks and four-story office buildings pieces in a vast board game. Now he realized that he was no more than a chip himself and the game’s players had a hidden agenda‌—‌one that had clearly eluded him.

  His fingers probed his pocket for his AA chip, a constant reminder that Alcoholics Anonymous had ended the tornado that had taken over his life before he stopped drinking. He held it in a vice-like grip, grateful.