by Jones, Rick
What he wanted was peace.
Closing his eyes he once again prayed. Not in idle words written on the pages of text to be recited without feeling or emotion, but words from his heart and soul. He spoke in whispers and hushed tones, wondering if He was listening, and asked for forgiveness for the lives he had stolen without remorse.
However, in the aftermath of prayer came the passage of silence.
No feathers floated down from the ceiling, thunder did not sound off in the clear blue sky, nor did he receive any sign that God was even listening. Believing his fate had been determined, he surrendered his attempt of good faith by blowing out the candles.
“Well, so much for praying, Monsignor. At least I tried.”
Getting to his feet, Kimball crossed the short space to his bed and fell onto the mattress, the bed whining in protest beneath his weight.
With a strong light coming in through the window, he lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and stared at the pieces of leaden glass that formed the colorful figure of the Virgin Mother, who reached out to him with outstretched arms that glowed in the mid-day light.
With silence filling the room, Kimball Hayden turned away from the image and fell into a much needed sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Manila, Philippines
Twelve years ago his legs had been taken above the knees.
Twelve years later Marshall Theodore Walker, once an assassin with the Pieces of Eight, went commercial after the Force Elite disbanded.
In a small apartment five stories above the busy and chaotic streets overlooking Manila, Walker awoke in a wild tangle of sheets that had gone unwashed for several weeks. Through the windows he could hear the busy Filipino marketplace below, as vendors sold butchered strips of meat, gutted fish and fruit.
Sitting up in bed with his hair naturally unkempt and his eyes at half-mast, Walker stared at the stumps of his legs and recalled the exact moment of their loss.
As a consultant with a private military company in Iraq during the onset of the war, he was riding point during a recon mission in the Al Anbar Province, when the vehicle he was in tripped an IED. In a fiery flash the floor of the Humvee buckled upward into the cab as shrapnel as keen as surgical steel sliced through everything, including the bones of his legs in such neat precision that there were no ragged tears, mutilated muscle or jagged bones—just perfect saw-blade cuts.
When he came to he found his team dead, sliced and burned, the vehicle twisted around him like a protective capsule. Where they had died, Walker had lived. And often he found himself wishing he had followed his comrades to Glory.
Closing his eyes he sighed in the way of regret, the memories as vivid as the day the IED took his legs. The pain, the phantom itches, none of it fading or going away, the scars—real and imagined—a constant reminder of that life-altering moment in the Province.
Living mainly off a small government allowance, he pissed away most of it on cheap booze, low rent and Filipina whores, the sum of his life. And now he awoke with a headache, an empty bottle of some indigent liquor he couldn’t even pronounce on the nightstand beside him.
Scooting down along the bed, Walker maneuvered himself into position, propped himself into his wheelchair, and made his way across a room that was a fetid wasteland of dirty clothes and empty bottles.
When he got to the kitchen he felt something that had been lost to him that day in Al Anbar—that impression of an animal sensing great danger.
In the center of the kitchen he paused, waited, listened.
Nothing but the Manila crowds in the streets below plying their wares.
And yet: I know you’re here.
With his head on a swivel, his eyes aware, Walker reached for a Glock taped beneath the kitchen table.
But the holster was empty.
Clever creature, aren’t you?
In a movement so swift and from shadows so dense, something moved across the room with such speed and poetic grace that the action in itself was gloriously beautiful.
It was also the last thing Walker considered before being rendered unconscious with a blow to the head.
#
When Walker came to he found himself face down on the kitchen table with his arms draped over the sides and his wrists bound to the table’s legs with duct tape. He was bound so tightly that he was rendered immobile and, having partial legs, had no leverage to move.
He rolled his head to one side, kept it there, his eyes trying to tune in, to focus, his world now coming to a crisp clarity, the things around him beginning to take on definition and form.
A man he did not recognize sat next to the table, watching. His eyes were so dark they seemed without pupils, yet they were studious and patient and somehow terrifyingly omniscient. His face was highly rawboned with a lantern jaw and powerful chin.
The man, seeing Walker’s eyes come to a meeting point with his own, held up an 8x10 photo. “Do you know what this is?”
Walker passed a dry tongue over parched lips. “Who are you?”
“Do you know what this is?” the man repeated.
Walker studied the photo and recognized it as a photo of his old unit, the Pieces of Eight. In it he was much younger and whole, everyone hamming it up for the camera with the exception of Kimball Hayden, the man without conscience or remorse.
“What do you want?”
The man held the photo close. “Take another look.”
Walker noted that he and two others were circled with a red marker. “Yeah . . . So?”
“The other two, I know they’re working for a private military outfit as consultants here in the Philippines. I need to know where they are. And you’re going to tell me.”
“You think so, huh? Well, you can just kiss my fat ass. How ‘bout that?”
“Where are they, Mr. Walker?”
“You know something, you little punk? You’re a real tough guy taking on a cripple, you know that? If you took me on in the condition I was in in that photo, you’d be a dead man.”
“I’m well aware of the Pieces of Eight and I hardly doubt, Mr. Walker, even during your prime, that you’d be able to match my skills as an assassin.”
“Tough talk coming from a man who’s whole. How about you undo the tape so we can see how well you fare against a cripple not tied down? Or are you too much of a pussy to find out?”
“Mr. Walker . . . where are they?”
“And why should I tell you?”
The man remained tolerant, and then in monotone, “Look at me, Mr. Walker.” From his cargo pocket he pulled out a silver cylinder and depressed a button. A pick shot out like the blade of a stiletto. Its tip keenly pointed and honed to a razor’s sharpness.
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
“No, Mr. Walker, it’s a tool, really—a writing pen, as you will.”
“What?”
The man held the blade over Walker’s naked backside.
“What are you doing?”
“Please, Mr. Walker, remain still.” The man set the pick’s tip against Walker’s shoulder blade, the embedded point drawing a bead of crimson. “This will only take a moment.” And then he drew the pick across his back, a neat slice running from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.
Walker arched his back against the pain, his teeth clenching in protest until the muscles in his jaw worked furiously.
But he refused to cry out.
“Very good, Mr. Walker, a true warrior never shouts out in pain, does he?”
“Oh, you son-of-a-bitch! Untie me and take me on as a man!”
The assassin held the photo towards Walker. “Mr. Grenier and Mr. Arruti—tell me where they are.”
“What do you want with them?”
“Isn’t it apparent, Mr. Walker? I obviously want to kill them.”
Walker laughed condescendingly. “Are you out of your mind?”
The man carefully placed the point of the pick against the center point of the horizontal slash, and drew th
e sharpened point downward along the spinal column to the small of his back, the drawing cuts forming a perfect T.
Walker arched again, his face as red as the blood that coursed from his wounds and onto the table, the veins of his neck sticking out in cords. “YOU . . . BASTARD!”
“That was close to crying out, Mr. Walker. Not the true sign of a warrior, is it?”
“Piss off!”
“Arruti and Grenier, where are they?”
Walker laughed.
“Mr. Walker?”
His laughter escalated.
“Very well, then.” The man placed the tip of the pick against the small of Walker’s back and drew a horizontal line, the three slices now forming the letter I.
Walker’s body tensed against the pain. And then through the set of his clenched teeth, he said, “You want to know where they are?”
The man waited patiently, the point of the pick stained with red.
“I’ll tell you. I’ll be glad to tell you . . . And do you want to know why I’ll be glad to tell you?”
The man held the pick high, the steel cylinder throwing off a mirror polish.
“Because they’re going to rip you to pieces,” he told him. “It doesn’t matter if they know you’re coming or not. They’ll smell you. They’ll sense you. They’ll feel you . . . And then they’ll kill you.”
“Where are they?”
Walker was obviously fading, his voice weakening. “You’ll find them in Maguindanao consulting against the terrorist factions there.”
“Thank you, Mr. Walker.”
“I’ll see you in Hell.”
“That’s unlikely.” The man placed the point of the pick at the base of Walker’s skull and forced the point upward through the opening of the brain stem and into the brain, killing him.
As Walker’s body deflated, the man expelling a final breath that cleared his lungs, he soon fell into the gentle repose of death.
The man, after watching Walker transition from life to death, pressed the button on the cylinder. The pick quickly retreated into the tube faster than the eye could see.
Placing the weapon into a cargo pocket of his pants, the man removed a red marker, wrote the letter ‘I’ in the circled picture of Walker, and left the photo behind.
The assassin would be in Maguindanao Province within hours.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cotabato City, Philippines
Cotabato City in Mindanao is a city of roughly a quarter-million people with a high Muslim population. It is also a city of growing insurgency where al-Qaeda and the Taliban were taking root—the area becoming the ‘New Afghanistan’ of the Pacific Rim.
Five years ago when The Blackmill Corporation became employed by the Philippine government as a freelance consulting firm from the United States, the government was really hiring high-tech mercenaries to help counteract the spread of revolutionary idealism that was becoming a blight to the small island nation. And Cotabato City, which bordered the guerilla strongholds thirty kilometers to the south, served as the company’s command post.
In a small, smoke-filled bar that smelled of sweat and cheap cigarettes that did little to mask that stench, War Consultants David Arruti and Sim Grenier sat at a table in the back of the establishment knocking back a few shots of whisky.
Although in their forties they remained in good shape, keeping their bodies regimentally fit. Of the two Arruti looked more like the aggressor with a handlebar mustache, shaved head, and powerhouse arms that were exposed from a sleeveless shirt. Sim Grenier, however, looked like the corporate thinker—a man of good dress, even though a huge Rorschach moth of perspiration spread out to meet the overflow from his armpits of a neatly pressed shirt—who always kept his hair nicely coiffed in such high humidity.
Whenever they banded together they spoke little of the past when they were a part of the Pieces of Eight. Instead, they spoke of the future and about guerilla insurgencies in Mindanao. They often spoke of strategies and counter offensives, as well as the beneficial possibilities their success may bring to the people of the Philippines.
But little did they speak of the past.
On the opposite side of the room a male wearing a camouflaged boonie cap sat alone at a table with a glass of water. He appeared to be focused on a Blackberry-type device, punching buttons with a stylus, his surroundings oblivious to him.
However, he did not go without notice.
Grenier kept a watchful eye on the man who appeared without concern.
“Yeah, I saw him too,” said Arruti. “He’s been here for about an hour and he hasn’t taken a sip of his water.”
“He’s not a part of our units?”
“No.”
“So tell me, what is a Caucasian male doing this close to the Mindanao territory knowing full well he could become a target for kidnappers?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know.”
“There’s government warnings posted everywhere, especially for travelers.”
Arruti kicked back a shot of whisky. “Not my problem if people want to be stupid.”
At a nearby table two Filipinos began to argue in earnest about the outcome of a card game and the pot, about thirty cigarettes. As the yelling subsided, Arruti and Grenier turned and immediately took note that the man was gone. The glass of water was still there, untouched. Beneath the glass was a photo, an 8x10 glossy.
They scanned the entire bar, necks craning, turning. The man was gone like a wraith, becoming a part of the cigarette smoke that was everywhere, thick and cloying.
“Curious,” Arruti murmured.
When the barmaid went to clean the table she picked up the photo, scrutinized it, looked at the two consultants, and then headed for their table.
With a beautiful smile, perfectly lined teeth and cocoa-tanned skin, she approached them holding the face of the photo in their direction. Even from a distance of ten feet they could see it was a picture of their old unit, the Pieces of Eight.
The Filipina, who was adorably cute and doubled as a bargirl who enticed the Blackmill employees for American dollars to screw on a stained mattress in the upstairs loft, handed the photo to Grenier. “Mr. Sim, on back it says to give to you.”
Grenier took it, and then passed it off to Arruti who examined it long and hard. He and Grenier were circled in red marker. Walker had been X’ed out.
The barmaid began to rotate her hips in sexual innuendo, and then ran a tongue over her luscious lips. “Maybe when I’m done, you can take me upstairs?”
Grenier feigned a smile. “Not tonight, my love. Maybe some other time.”
The barmaid offered a petulant pout, and then smiled. “OK, Mr. Sim. Some other time, then.” With an enticing swagger to her gait, she returned to the table and began to clean it with a filthy rag.
Grenier watched her movements from the waist down as Arruti continued to examine the photo.
And then from Arruti, in a voice sounding so definite and so evenly calm that there was no doubt of the certainly in his statement, said, “We’re being targeted.”
Grenier sighed. “We need to check on Walker.”
He flipped the photo to the tabletop. “He’s already dead.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do.” Arruti got to his feet, all six foot four of him, and reached for a Glock that was situated in the back of his beltline and racked it. “He’s calling us out, Sim.”
Grenier stood and checked his weapon, a Smith and Wesson .40, then felt for the sheath of the KA-BAR knife straddled to his right thigh. “Then let’s not disappoint him.”
#
The streets of Cotabato City were well lit beneath the multiple coils of neon lighting. Yet there were recesses deeply shadowed, alleyways opening into complete and utter darkness.
It was also a place of opposites: light and dark, good and evil, life and death, all within a span of a few blocks.
Standing beneath a circular pool of light, Grenier and Arruti openly s
crewed suppressors onto their weapons.
“You take the left side and I’ll take the right,” said Arruti. “And don’t kill him. I want to question this guy.”
Without adding a word Grenier took the left side of the avenue, his weapon held firmly against his thigh.
Arruti did the same on the right side, his weapon ready for the quick draw.
As they moved slowly through the dense Filipino crowd, Arruti came upon the mouth of the alleyway.
Approximately twenty feet in, where the light of visibility ends and a wall of darkness began, someone stood at the fringe of illumination, watching.
“Simon Grenier.” It was a man’s voice—no doubt the Caucasian’s. “Or would you prefer I call you Sim?”
Grenier took a step forward, the Shape a step back, deeper into darkness.
“What are you afraid of, mate?”
“Hardly a fair fight when you’re carrying a firearm.”
“You mean the same kind of fairness you showed Walker?”
“Walker’s fate was written the moment the IED took his legs.”
“That’s your justification for taking out an invalid?”
Grenier took another step forward, his hand working to better his grip on the Smith and Wesson. The Shape retreated another step.
“So tell me something,” said Grenier. “Whose little boy are you?”
The Caucasian remained silent, and then he gracefully fell back into the shadows until he was totally eclipsed.
Grenier felt uneasy knowing he was completely exposed, the Smith and Wesson having little value when his target went unseen—a target Arruti wanted alive. In feline motion he went for the nearest point of salvation, a recess steeped in gloom, and hunkered down. He was now in his element, he thought—that of Stygian darkness. And because of this he felt the advantage now belonged to him.
He waited and listened.
And then he began to level his weapon, the point coming up slowly.
And then something ripped through the darkness.