Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening

by John Wayne Falbey

  SLEEPING DOGS:

  THE AWAKENING

  By:

  John Wayne Falbey

  Copyright © 2012 John Wayne Falbey.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  John Wayne Falbey

  wfalbey@sleepingdogs.biz

  ISBN: 978-0-9855187-1-4

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012909065

  DEDICATION

  To Annie, my wife, and so much more—my best friend, my partner, my playmate, my biggest fan, my inspiration. Thank you for your love, patience, encouragement and trust. No one has ever had a better companion for life.

  “It is nought good a slepying hound to wake”

  - Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde

  PART ONE:

  A STRAY DOG

  1 Georgetown: Coincidence

  Brendan Whelan was a dead man. That’s what his death certificate said—the victim of a plane crash nearly two decades earlier. A plane had crashed, that was true. But Whelan hadn’t been on it. He and five colleagues had been fleeing for their lives from a Presidential Decision Directive. The PDD, a document classified as a matter of national security, had ordered the six men to be terminated with extreme prejudice. The crash had been arranged to provide cover for them. But he assumed the PDD was still active. Yet here he was, almost twenty years later, in the most dangerous place on earth for him to be—the United States.

  An old friend and mentor, Clifford Levell, was well aware of the danger, yet he all but commanded Whelan to come to him. He didn’t know what Levell wanted. The man wouldn’t say over the phone. But he owed Levell. Owed him a lot. Levell had been his mentor, his creator—in a sense his Dr. Frankenstein. He had made Whelan into the man he was today. He knew Levell wouldn’t expose him to the dangers he faced in the States if the situation wasn’t critical. Still, he was angry at having to leave his family and the comfortable, safe life he had built in Ireland. And very uneasy being back in the States.

  It was early morning, a few days into a new year, and cold. Whelan wore thin glove liners, partly to counter the chill and partly to avoid leaving fingerprints in the rented Jeep. A stranger in a strange land, particularly one under a death warrant, takes precautions. A soft rain, not much more than a heavy mist, blurred the landscape, creating halo effects around the streetlights. The only sounds were the hiss of the tires on the wet street and the Grand Cherokee’s wipers wagging slowly across the windshield. The hypnotic rhythm didn't help his fatigued state. Even the odor of stale cigarette smoke from a previous user didn’t seem as annoying now.

  Stifling a yawn, Whelan punched the radio’s On button, hoping it would provide some stimulation. Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” was playing. It brought back memories of another era. Some good, some not so good.

  Whelan thought about the handful of others like him who also had been trained by Levell. He remembered every one of them, even the ones they’d lost along the way. All of them had been young then, and gifted in ways most people couldn’t imagine. Whelan knew he had been Levell’s prize student. He wondered what had become of the five other survivors. The same PDD authorized their executions, also.

  Levell had stayed in touch with each of them over the years – separately, for their own safety. Whelan wondered whether Levell had summoned any of the other survivors to this meeting. Probably not—it was just too dangerous.

  He turned the Jeep into a quiet residential section of Georgetown. It was a shame the others wouldn’t be present. He’d like to see some of them again: Larsen, the man with no neck; Stensen, the vigilante; Thomas, the philosopher; Kirkland, the Zen master; even Almeida, the weakest link but usually good for comic relief. He remembered them all—each extremely intelligent, superbly athletic, beta models of humans of the future. And stone killers every one.

  Headlights caromed out of the mist to his right. Shit. Exhausted and distracted by his thoughts, he hadn’t noticed the vehicle approaching from a side street. It was too late to avoid the collision. Instinctively, he yanked the steering wheel hard left, causing the Jeep to slew on the wet road. Better for the large, black limousine to impact the passenger side of his truck at an angle rather than take its force head-on.

  The Jeep was only partially angled to the left when the collision occurred. The limo’s driver had yanked his steering wheel to the right. His car’s left front fender slammed into the Jeep’s right front fender. The ugly sounds of glass shattering and metal twisting and ripping violated the stillness of the night. The force of the impact spun the Jeep 180 degrees, tires shrieking against the pavement in a futile attempt to find purchase. Momentum propelled the Jeep diagonally across the intersection. It rolled to a sudden stop as its rear bumper rammed a light pole, knocking it askew.

  Whelan’s fatigue vanished with the force of the impact. His senses were fully alive now. The smell of leaking gasoline clashed with the oddly comforting scent of the leather seats. His survival instincts were on high. He couldn’t get involved with police or emergency medical personnel. The urge to climb out of the truck and bolt into the shelter of the night was powerful. And Levell’s house was only two blocks away.

  The tilting streetlight acted like a floodlight in the mist, focused on the Jeep. Through the crazed pattern in the damaged windshield, Whelan saw that the limo had stopped in the middle of the intersection. The limo driver and another man got out. Both were large men, dressed in badly fitting, out of fashion dark suits and solid color ties. Each wore an earbud. As they drew closer, he saw that each was wearing a brass nametag pinned to a breast pocket. The limo driver’s said “Borys.” His companion’s said “Vadim.”

  Whelan waited calmly in the Jeep as the two men approached. From their facial scars and the way they carried themselves, it was clear they were no strangers to violence. Whelan assumed these were dangerous men. He kept both hands on top of the steering wheel where the men could see them.

  As they approached on the driver’s side, Vadim stopped near the rear of the vehicle. Borys leaned his six-foot-five-inch frame down and peered carefully through the driver’s window. Whelan knew what they’d see: Other than a day’s growth of beard, his skin was smooth and unlined. His features were even, with a strong chin and patrician nose. He had light brown hair, parted on the right. Ordinary. Except for his eyes. They were an icy blue, like the color of a deep glacial crevasse, and they were locked onto Borys’s eyes with no sign of emotion. Whelan saw that it unnerved Borys. Men that large and sinister looking were accustomed to being the intimidator.

  “You are all right, yes?” Borys said. Whelan recognized an Eastern European accent.

  “Yes.”

  “You have identification, yes?” Borys held out a meaty hand for emphasis.

  With his right hand, Whelan reached slowly into his front pocket and pulled out his wallet. He removed a driver’s license and handed it to Borys. As the large man took it, Whelan noticed the back of his hand was heavily tattooed, even his fingers.

  Borys squinted at the ID in the poor light and said, “Walter Bailey. From Omaha, Nebraska.” His W sounded more like a V. English was his second language. Barely.

  “That’s right.”

  Borys glanced briefly at Vadim, then, turning back, said, “You are long way from Omaha, yes? Is late. What you are doing in Georgetown?”

  “Attending a college reunion. Haven’t been back here in years. Must have gotten lost.”

&n
bsp; Borys spoke a single word in his native tongue and pointed to the ground next to the Jeep. The word was foreign to Whelan but he understood the gesture. Get out of the truck.

  He kept his right hand visible on the steering wheel. With his left, he slowly reached down and opened the door. In the process, he nicked his little finger on a piece of glass from the broken windshield. A small trickle of blood began to ooze from the cut.

  Whelan swung his legs over the rocker panel and stepped carefully out of the truck. He suspected the situation was about to get worse. He would need just the right moment to act.

  Borys motioned Whelan out into the street. The three men stopped directly beneath the tilting streetlight. As they did, Borys suddenly raised a hand to his earbud. It drew Whelan’s attention to the additional tattoos on Borys’s neck. He glanced quickly at Vadim and saw similar body graffiti. He recognized them as gang symbols—for an especially ruthless Ukrainian crime syndicate.

  Borys listened for a few moments to the voice coming through the earpiece then glanced at Vadim. They each took a step backward, swiftly pulling Glock 17s from the waistband of their pants. Borys said, “We are thinking you are not this man, Bailey, and we are thinking you lie about college reunion.”

  Whelan said nothing.

  Borys stepped closer and raised the Glock so that it was angled about 45 degrees with the ground and pointing just to the outside of Whelan’s left kneecap.

  “I have good nose for bullshit,” said Borys, tapping the side of his thick nose with a meaty forefinger. “I am thinking you are one of Levell’s peoples. And you are on way to see him.” He turned slightly to smirk at Vadim. When he did, the muzzle of the weapon edged away from Whelan’s knee. It was his moment of opportunity.

  Whelan moved fast. Faster than Borys’s brain could relay a message from his eyes to his trigger finger. Whelan wrapped his left hand around Borys’s thick right wrist just above the gun in his hand. Half turning to his left, he wrapped his right arm over and around the big man’s right arm. His forearm was just above Borys’s elbow. Borys, like a hound with a flea, tried to shake free of the man who was more than 50 pounds lighter. To his shock, he couldn’t.

  Still gripping Borys’s arm, Whelan swiftly brought his right knee up above waist height, then drove the heel of his shoe down and into the outside of Borys’s right knee. The technique was designed to force the tibia out of the knee socket, destroying the tibial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments and ripping the meniscus. He heard the satisfying pop as Borys’s knee buckled at a grotesque angle. He quickly and smoothly swung Borys’s bulk into Vadim’s line of fire.

  Seamlessly, Whelan’s left hand pulled down forcefully on Borys’s wrist while he simultaneously drove his forearm upward against the big man’s upper arm. With another popping sound, Borys’s elbow joint dislocated and the weapon fell from his hand. Its polymer frame made a dull clattering sound as it hit the pavement. As Borys screamed in agony and began to collapse, Whelan literally threw the 300-pound man at Vadim. He sprinted up Borys’s massive falling body like a running back scaling linemen at the goal line. At the top, he launched a flying kick, his right heel smashing Vadim’s nose, nearly ripping it from his face. It snapped his head back. Stunned, Vadim staggered backward and almost fell.

  Before Vadim could recover and refocus his weapon, Whelan closed the gap and grabbed his gun hand, thrusting a finger behind the trigger to prevent firing. He drove a knee forcefully into Vadim’s groin. A loud grunt exploded from the injured man’s lips. His knees buckled and he grabbed desperately at his assailant for support. But Whelan was too quick. He had both hands on Vadim’s right wrist and swung it up and around, careful to keep the weapon pointing away from him. He continued to sweep the arm backward and up, a difficult maneuver for ordinary people with a man as large as Vadim. But, genetically, Whelan was far from ordinary.

  He tugged Vadim toward him, forcing him to shift his weight to his right foot, which Whelan swept from under him. The big man did a forward somersault and landed on the back of his neck. Before he could recover, Whelan drove the heel of his right shoe deep onto the soft tissue of Vadim’s unprotected throat, destroying his windpipe, larynx, and the scream that tried to rise from it. Unable to breathe, he quickly lost consciousness and would be dead in less than three minutes.

  Whelan turned back to Borys, who was writhing in pain on the street. He picked up both men’s Glocks, then bent over Borys for an instant and brought the butt of one of the Glocks down, crushing the man’s forehead and driving bone splinters into his frontal lobes. It may not have been a deathblow, but at the very least it was enough to destroy motor skills, libido, and problem-solving and creative thought processes. Borys, if he survived, would be in a vegetative state for his remaining years.

  Whelan shifted his attention to the black limo, knowing that time was running very short. Neighbors would have heard the crash. By now, they would have called the authorities. He walked swiftly, but cautiously, toward the car, keeping one Glock focused on the middle of the windshield and the other on the left rear window. When he was still fifteen feet away, the right rear door opened and another large man climbed out. He was dressed similarly to Borys and Vadim. He brought his weapon up, bracing his arms on the limo’s roof for stability. Whelan opened fire with both of the 9mm Glocks. One hollow-point round pierced the bodyguard’s left eye and exited the back of his skull, taking much of his brain matter with it. His head snapped backward, and his body countered by toppling forward. The corpse slid clumsily down the side of the limo, leaving a bloody streak all the way to the rocker panel.

  As Whelan drew close to the limo, the left rear window began to slide down. He aimed both Glocks into the darkness behind it. A face slowly emerged. He kept both weapons trained on it and made a quick scan of the car’s interior. The passenger was alone. He was wearing a dark brown double-breasted Burberry trench coat and clutching a cordovan leather attaché case in his hands. His face had collected more wrinkles and his hair, still parted in the same style, was much grayer and thinner, but the years had been kind to him and Whelan recognized him immediately.

  “My God! It is you!” the older man said. “But…you’re dead!” And then it was he who was dead; shot in the middle of the forehead by a slug from one of the Glocks.

  2 Georgetown: Reunion

  Whelan heard the sounds of sirens in the distance, drawing closer. He glanced quickly around the neighborhood. Meticulously restored Georgian townhouses were pleasingly mixed with large homes in the Federal and Classical Revival styles. Lights had come on in some of their upper stories, and a few neighbors were peering out bedroom windows. Whelan squeezed off a couple of rounds, shattering the windows but intentionally not harming the occupants. It had the desired effect. The faces instantly disappeared and didn’t return.

  He shoved a Glock into each of his windbreaker’s side pockets, and reached through the limo’s open window. Grabbing the attaché case from the dead man’s hands, he moved swiftly across the intersection, purposely heading away from Levell’s house. At the end of the next block, he turned right and ran swiftly and effortlessly for three blocks before turning right again. Levell’s house was at the end of the block.

  Whelan cleared the front steps with a single leap and rang the bell. As he waited, he glanced around to make certain no one was watching. It felt like an eternity passed, so he rang the bell again. By now the police would have deciphered the residents’ excited babble. They would begin fanning out through the neighborhood, knowing the perp couldn’t have gone far on foot.

  At last, the door was opened by an Asian man of indeterminate age. He was lean and wiry; about five feet seven inches tall with closely cropped black hair. His flat, finely chiseled features were expressionless. The man wore baggy black trousers, a black tee shirt, and Kung Fu slippers. Whelan guessed him to be Korean, and knowing Levell, assumed the man was a skilled martial artist.

  “May I help you?” He had a high-pitched voice and a heavy
accent.

  “Mr. Levell is expecting me.”

  The Asian man eyed him for a moment then said, “You wait”, and started to close the door.

  Whelan said, “I need to wait inside.”

  The man, aware of the sirens, quickly connected the dots and stepped aside. Whelan was prepared to wait just inside the door until the man returned, but Levell’s voice broke in from somewhere in the house. “Mr. Rhee, has our guest arrived?”

  “Yes, he here now.”

  Rhee motioned Whelan to follow him, and led the way across a large living room toward a hallway on the other side. There was a slightly musty odor in the air. Not mildew or mold; more like a space that hadn’t been aired in a long time. The living room was dimly lighted by a single Tiffany lamp on a small table in one corner. The dark woods and Victorian-style furnishings added to the gloomy atmosphere. Several paintings, which Whelan took to be Gainsboroughs or excellent imitations, hung on the walls. The windows were clothed with heavy velvet drapes. A tray ceiling created a slight dome effect and supported a large, cut glass chandelier made of lead crystal. The flooring was a dark hardwood, partially covered by a large rug. Like many of the other furnishings and accessories, it looked old and valuable.

  Rhee led Whelan down a wide, dimly lit hallway to a room that obviously was a den. Tall wooden bookshelves lined three walls. A large stone fireplace and mantle were built into the fourth wall. Several logs were burning nicely. Each side of the fireplace was decorated with framed photographs taken at various points in Levell’s life. Whelan recognized some of them from his experiences with the man two decades earlier. A large paneled, wooden desk sat in the middle of the room, papers strewn across its surface. Other than the fire, a small lamp on one corner of the desk provided the only light in the room.