1 Manic Monday (14 page)

He felt a sudden urge to cry.  He had a violent
reaction to failure.  That was the truth of what had happened here. 
He had missed the opportunity.  He had allowed himself to become
distracted.  He had botched his mission.

Part of him wept.  Part of him was scared.  The
scared part of him turned to find the woman with the locket.

She was gone.  Or, rather, she was on the ground. 
Blood ran from her ear.  The skin on her right hand where she had held the
locket looked as though it was burned.  She was still smiling. The locket
lay on the ground, a small trace of grey smoke rising from it.

Confused, Jake looked about for someone to help.  A
voice told him this was unwise.  Who was he?  Who was she?  Did
she just save him or stop him?

Abandon the Plan.  Go Home.

He was disoriented.  This woman had died at his feet,
this woman who had stood there, in full knowledge of who he was.  Not the
Trap, not even Jake Monday, the assassin. 
Someone else,
someone from before.
  Jake hoped he had not killed her. 

He remembered the button in his pocket.  He had not
pushed it, he was sure.  He glanced back to her still form lying curled in
the grass.  Who was she, and why had someone wanted her dead?  It was
connected to him, he knew.  He had a hazy recollection of the conversation
with Deputy Director Smith.  He was the trap. 
But
why?
 

Jake looked again at the locket.  He was reminded of
when he was a kid.  He had stuck the barrel of his
Halco
cap gun revolver into the open light socket on the wall, pretending he could
shoot his brother in the other room.  The force from the electrical
current had blackened the end of his pistol and sent him sprawling to the
floor, tangled in his sheepskin vest and his plastic-heeled cowboy boots were flung
to the wall.  His mother had explained that some people could die from
that.  Others would get a tingling sensation.  She compared it to
being struck by lightning.  Some survived.  Some were changed. 
Some died.  It was a mystery. 
Then and now.
 
A mystery like the memory he had just dredged from somewhere unknown.

Was this woman really from the CIA and tailing him?  He
thought that would be a cruel jape.  The woman with the key to his past, a
past he knew was there, but could not pursue had died at his feet. 
Because of him.
  Was it because of who he really
was?  Or, was the threat to Galbraith palpable enough to kill her in this
venue? 

He knew answers to these questions would be elusive. 
But, looking around at the milieu around him, he suspected that the real
mission here was to expose this woman publicly.  So, what about his
mission to assassinate the President?  Was that as simple as it
seemed?  And who was pulling the purse strings for a hit like that? 
And why?

It rarely occurred to him to question the why of what he
did.  He knew it was a dangerous road to tread.  In fact, his concern
for Giselle had arisen more from a perceived ethical issue than from a truly
altruistic mien.

The urge to flee overcame his analyzation of his
predicament.  His mission protocols kicked in.   When he
reviewed them, recalling them from his memory like a computer print-out, he
realized that he was not meant to return.  He felt the truth of it like a
kick in the gut.  If he was not to return, what would his welcome be like?

He recognized the logo for the Falcons.  Atlanta. 
Running was a bad idea. He glanced around at the confusion around him and knew
this was the best cover he could expect.  No cameras. 
People are running, the stage is empty.
  Only a few
people milling around with hands on their ears. With a final glance at the
woman on the ground, he walked out toward gates.

On the way out, he dropped the cylinder in a trash
can.  He smiled at everyone and looked for someone he recognized.  He
was among thousands of confused, upset, scared people.  Yet, he felt
alone.  The feeling was crushing his chest. 

After an hour of wandering the streets amid the confusion,
Jake got a cab.  No one had stopped him.  No one had recognized
him.  He found he had over three thousand dollars in cash.  And he
was indeed Jake Monday.  He had always been, despite everything else that
happened.

He got a ticket to New York with a Visa.  No one looked
at him askance.  As he travelled, bits and pieces of the past six months
came to him. 
Missions.
 
Dangers.
 
Suspicions.
  But over those memories was a patina
of red. 
A haze that masked and contorted those
recollections.
  When he tried to recall his earlier life, his life
before Galbraith, all he got in return was a painful, blinding headache and the
image of the picture by his bedside of people he did not recognize. Some things
are hard to forget.  Some things were impossible to remember.

What am I?
he
asked
himself.  He loathed the answer when it came. It took him the entire
weekend to sort out what his life had become.  Something about it left a
hollow pit in his stomach and made his heart hurt.   His self-hatred
crashed against him harder than the pain from buried memories he could not
recall.  The weekend left him battered, yet he dreaded what would be in
store for him on Monday.

Will Jake discover the truth about his past?  Why is
Jake being set up and who is behind it?  To answer these questions and
more, check out the next installment of the
Jake Monday Chronicles
at
www.infinitewordpress.com
. 
Available May 1
^st
, 2013.

 
Manuel Villarreal knew when something was not
right.  Most people had a sense of it when they made a mistake. 
Sometimes a sense of dread could overcome them or they would have a prescient
moment.  The way that Paul had explained it to Manny was that the Spirit
of God moves in each person and manifests itself as guilt, prophesy, regret, or
action, among other manifestations of the Spirit.

Whatever the explanation,
Manny knew without a doubt that something bad was about to happen.  Mostly
he could attribute this sense of dread with a dream he had.

Initially, he had chalked it up
to the heavy meal they had consumed together before they retired last
night.  It was not a premonition.  It was a memory. This was not the
first time he had experienced this dream. 

He had dreamt of Domingo and
his father.  He remembered the dream so vividly because it called upon his
memory, not his imagination.
Often, when he had this dream,
it foretold of pending trouble.

He recalled the dream again in
his mind’s eye as the boat drifted in port and he awaited the arrival of Paul
and Claire. He closed his eyes and let the dream take him back to that time ten
years ago.  The gentle rocking of the boat in the moors allowed him to
drift, to go back, and to experience the past again.

He moved through the jungle
with four others.  They were all shadows.  Dressed in black with dark
paint on their faces, their rifles were charcoal black, their painted bayonets
black, and their knives at their sides a flat black, even the blades. 
They were murderous, black-clad devils, their movements graceful and deadly. 
Their purpose—dealing death—was awash upon their stoic faces, the set of their
feet upon the lush forest floor, the urgent breathing, caught in their throats,
ragged and full of expectation, revenge and regret.

They stole through the
undergrowth toward a rise.  Cesar, the tall one, took the rifle from his
back, a Russian Dragonov sniper rifle he had stolen from a Nicaraguan
militia.  He stooped in the tall grass at the top of the hill and unzipped
his carrying bag in the dark.

They gathered around him
silently as he pulled out a large pouch.  From it, he extracted the PSO-1
sights.  He fitted it quickly on the side rail of the rifle.  Then,
he pulled from the bag a suppressor that fit on the barrel just past the flash
reducer already there.  He chambered a 7.62mm bullet from the ten round
magazine
with a sharp report.

Cesar looked up at them and
nodded.

Manuel gave him a “thumb up”
sign.  They all hunkered down or lay prone on the grass.  Cesar
crawled forward; the sling wrapped around one hand, his elbows digging into the
moist soil.

They managed this way until
they could see the cabin less than two hundred yards away.  Bright yellow
light spilled from its windows and illumined the four guards standing near the
front.  The Venezuelan guards chatted quietly, their voices carrying in
the night.

Manny checked his watch and
then resumed his vigil.  The men eyed him anxiously, their rifles at
ready.  He could hear their nervous movements as they checked extra
magazines and the maps that each carried in their belts.

He looked for each of them,
knowing their shapes by heart, knowing the gleam in each of their eyes. Miguel
Santos, the wiry explosives expert from Cali.  Luis
Guilliermas
,
a French nationalist who had worked for the Villarreals for a decade. 
Mateo
Chaguala
Espanoza
,
the largest and strongest of the group.  They called him The Santa
Martan
Bull.  He carried the light machine gun, a
Belgium-made FN MAG 10, with two metal boxes of ammunition.

They each had a role to
play.  Cesar was to quietly eliminate the guards so they could breach the
perimeter.  Miguel’s role was to plant explosives to cover their retreat,
taking out a bridge, an armored personnel carrier, and two guard towers about a
click away.  Luis and Mateo were to breach the compound with Manny as Cesar
covered them from this rise.

Once Domingo was removed from
the compound they would rendezvous at a truck they had stashed just over a
kilometer to the north.  Cesar would drive.  It was a farm truck with
Venezuelan tags.  Cesar was known more as a farmer in these parts than a
rifleman.  Only Manny knew the truth.

 Without warning, the
grass in front of Cesar snapped as he fired the SVD.  One man who had bent
over to get a drink collapsed quietly into the dark surrounding the house.

Everyone held their breath and
watched.

The other three guards in the
valley below continued to talk.

One wandered off to the north.

Just as he was almost
swallowed up by the night, they saw him lurch forward.  Cesar had adjusted
his rifle so that the grass would not give away his position.  The night
sounds remained uninterrupted.  Birds chirped.  Insects hummed.

Manny could see Cesar’s smile,
cold and satisfied in the gloom.  His teeth were gritted together as he
swung the rifle to the front again.

“Perhaps now would be good, Miguel,”
Manny said as he tapped him on the shoulder.

Miguel nodded silently and
blinked.  He gathered a satchel and his silenced FAMAE S.A.F. submachine
gun.  His face was grim and set as he moved stealthily toward the bridge
below them.

Soon, the other two guards
were down.  Cesar moved off to the north, closer to the truck and in a
better position to cover the others.  Manny led Luis and Mateo down the
path.  They searched ahead for signs of more guards.  There were
none.

Manny glanced behind them,
satisfied that he could not spot Cesar on the ridge, even though he knew his
exact location:  left of the large boulder before the tree line.  He
scanned the creek and watched as the silent silhouette of Miguel stalked toward
the ditch on the opposite side of the road where the APC was parked, silent and
hulking in the night.

The cabin was before them, its
light casting the long shadows of the corpses littering the grounds. 
Manny could see inside past the glare.  Several heads were visible, some
seated, some pacing the room. 

He placed his hand on the
ground, pointed to Luis, and gestured to his left.  He looked at Mateo and
patted his back.  Luis moved off to the left, his black boots crunching in
the gravel of the drive.  Mateo nodded and took up a position ten feet
behind Manny and to his right as they approached the front door.

With eight armed guards and
two officers inside, Manny didn’t want to take too many chances with
crossfire.  They had Mateo for suppression, Luis using his shotgun from
the side door and Manny’s deadly aim with his folded stock AK-103.
Theoretically, they would subdue the captors quickly, despite being
outnumbered.

Before they reached the door,
a shout from behind them pierced the gloom.  Short, muffled bursts,
signaled Miguel’s submachine gun at work.  A low groan emitted from near
the ditch.  The noise had alerted those inside the compound.

Movement from within was
Manny’s cue to hurry.  Before he could clear the porch, though, Mateo
began firing through the window.  The light machine gun bucked in Mateo’s
hands, his face lit with effort and glee. His smile radiated through the night.