Invasion (21 page)

Agent Golding gives medic number one a nod, and the two strong men grip me, holding me down in compressed slurry, piercing my skin with their toxin, stripping me of my right to free will.

“I hate you,” I hiss, crying, trembling with shock and trauma and cold.

The needle stings, the liquid in it so cool it burns my blood when it’s injected. Screaming agony, shrieking for help, I battle the burn of what feels like a vitamin B injection to the neck, unable to struggle when they release me, curling onto the frozen ground into the fetal position, hugging myself, desperate for him to save me.

“GAVIN!!!!!!” I shriek, calling him back.

Help me!

The tears won’t stop, they run and run as if the wall holding back my emotional tide has perished.

All it does is remind me of the day I met him. He fixed that leak in two minutes. He’s so capable, so amazing.

Christ, I’ll never see him again.

It ruins me. It obliterates the sanity inside, emotional carnage decimating me. Hysterical sobs intercepted with shuddering inhalations saw through the chaos of my quiet street.

I’ve never felt so alone.

I’m in a swarm of activity and I’m so very, miserably, alone.

I’m one woman. They sent an entire army at me.

Assholes.

I’m abandoned, my body a ghost town where the winds of love haunt the streets. Why? Why would he leave me to face this alone? He knew a second wave was coming and he
abandoned
me to this.

Heartbreak bombs my coherence and I babble unintelligible nonsense, trying to comfort, to hold on, to keep it together, but I can’t.

I’m massacred as surely as my home is.

Hours later I’m ensconced in my living room, returned to a semblance of its previous perfection, with two men from the FBI and two from the CIA, a man dressed in full military regalia, and a woman who looks vaguely familiar to me, claiming to be from the NSA. She seems to be an observer, her keen eyes too perceptive, reading me like I’m transparent. Her stare alone penetrates and violates.

The drugs they gave me have made me weak and demure. My voice is even too low.

I’m exhausted.

I just want to be left alone to grieve. Can’t they see what they’re doing? Can’t they recognize that every question and every snippet of information destroys my life? His name isn’t even Gavin.

He lied to me!

FBI agent Richard Fellows leans closer, his elbows on his knees, trying his damnedest to look sympathetic to my plight. “The only fingerprints we found downstairs belong to you, your husband, and Master Sergeant David Hearse.”

“Ex,” I snap, getting pissy with them insisting on calling Mark my husband. Ex! He’s my ex husband and never earned the title to begin with. But from what I’ve learned I’m secretly proud of Gavin. He was in the marines, ex SEAL before being hand picked for covert ops.

Agent Fellows ignores my correction, saying, “He went AWOL in Nok Kundi - Pakistan, no further details are available on him because he went dark when working for Special Ops in the marines, suspected to be Dark ops. For his own safety all records of his covert activity and his placement in the military are wiped and above top secret. He is untouchable by local law enforcement and way beyond my pay grade. Finding him is a matter of national security.”

The military man steps into my line of sight. He hasn’t sat down, like he’s ready to defend and attack should Gavin come back with a rocket launcher.

The commander says to me, “Mz Carmichael, it’s imperative we find him. Any information you can give us will help him, I assure you of this. If our enemies find him before we do our nation’s leader will be in jeopardy.”

“He lied.” That’s my answer. I can’t get over the fact that he lied to me. The betrayal hurts so bad that my entire chest is aching. I feel battered, physically bruised by this ordeal.

“What is the nature of your relationship with the Master Sergeant?” asks the lady.

I glare at her. “He’s my handyman. I asked him to stay here over the holidays because my ex keeps showing up. I need protection from
him
, not Gavin … D-david.”

The lady comes to stand next to me, her hand on my shoulder, as if in comfort, but it taints me, her cold soul filtering through my skin, chasing my internal warmth into hibernation.

Shuddering, I shrug her hand off me. “If we’re quite done, I’d like a hot bath and a keg of wine.”

Three business cards are placed on the coffee table. “If you recall anything that will help us, if you have any information, please call us.”

I skewer the parade with my hatred. “It violates my constitutional rights to be monitored. This is harassment!”

I will die if I have to ask Mark for help, but he’s the best lawyer I know. Surely he can do something to legally prevent them from following me, from monitoring me?

Gavin said he’ll come back, and lordy I do not want him coming back to this! They’ll bring their army back, pin him down like they did to me, and take him away to protect their god damn secrets. Since when is the president’s life more important than the soldiers who protect and serve him? Every life counts god damn it! There’s someone at home waiting for that soldier! Living in purgatory without him.

Huddling into my knees, shutting them out, I dissolve again.

I don’t feel whole. I feel effervescent. My being is disintegrating, and the only thing holding me together right now is the body it’s in. Cold and wooden legs, aching arms, blocked and hot nose.

Sobbing, I stay put until all that reigns is a silent night, a cold wind blowing beyond the makeshift barrier they stapled to the cedar frame where my front door used to be.

Assholes.

Two hours later I’m done feeling sorry for myself. I keep thinking of the poor women I intercede for, and know if they can get through that trauma
I
can get through this.

Why did he lie? What isn’t he telling me?

Does he even know his name? He has amnesia, maybe he made a name up because no one in this world deserves to be nameless. To them he’s just a number in a system. Like a prisoner.

He signed on the dotted line and dedicated his life to the evil of war, trusting our nation’s president like a priest trusts the pope.

And what did it get him? This is awful! They’re hunting him like he’s a danger to us, but he’s the one in danger.

Damn it! Gavin, you should have taken me with you!

Slamming my wine glass on the kitchen counter I look at the mayhem that was my perfect little life. My insignificant and pathetic life. A paltry existence that is expendable to the cause if you own a badge and have security clearance, and know I can’t stay here.

I got the cabin in the divorce too, and it’s as stocked as this place is. I’m going there until Freda comes back from holiday. I need help to fix this shambles. I can’t face it now. I just can’t.

He’s everywhere, the memories so new that they still leave pools of warmth where they happened.

Mind made up I stomp upstairs just to be hit by the sight of my bed with all sheets stripped, the mattress flipped onto the ground, the base shifted to search for god knows what underneath.

Instinctively I pick up a pillow, inhaling his earthy scent.

Tears are the only heat left in me, drizzling down my skin to my turtleneck. With the aching cavity in my chest where the happiness I had is now demolished, I drop the pillow, leaving my dreams scattered in disarray on the floor with my worldly belongings, and pack my Hermes carry all with clothes, my Kindle, and my toiletries.

Trudging back downstairs I don’t even stop to make a flask of coffee, I just head straight to the board in the kitchen with all the keys, reaching for the cabin key, and see the hook empty.

It’s gone!

Mark, for heaven’s sake, will you never stop your shit!

After all the hell I thought I’d go up to Maine for a fortnight away, just to recover, but the keys are gone.

Mark is such an asshole. He’s taken so much from me, now he takes my hideaway from me too? The tears bubble over from the festering wounds within. Dropping the bag and sitting on it, I sob until I’m forced to unpack the tissues and blow my chaffed nose until soft tissue feels like sandpaper.

Unless … It wasn’t Mark!

It’s Gavin! - David.

How do I call him David? Does he even know he’s a David?

David won his wars in the bible. God is on his side.

Lord above I hope you’re with this David too.

I know where he went! He went to Maine! He’s hiding in my cabin!

Excited now, my hands shaking as hard as my shivering bowels, the trauma lingers, giving me shudders. I feel like my very soul has been raped.

Getting into my Prius and evacuating the spectacular fall of Carly Carmichael, I hit the gas, speeding away from my past to my future. If he’s a fugitive from them, I’m with him.

I don’t care about the house and belongings, none of it matters now. My life has funneled to a pinpoint of clarity.

Strip a woman of everything and the only thing she’ll have left to fight for, is the love flickering for air.

Rocketing onto icy motorways before anyone is awake, I head deep into forest country. Running away from my problems. Running towards the man who sculpted his name into my chest.

The irony of life is it’s not his name.

The NSA is responsible for the security and safety of the land of the eagle, given free pass to acquire all surveillance deemed necessary intelligence for the security of this nation.

As undercover agent Tarinda Sadiq, I sit in a black van with hot air conditioning a mile down the road, tailing the red blip on my screen.

When offering comfort to the distraught woman I did what I had to. I tagged her. We have to find and retrieve MS David Hearse. At any cost.

Memories can be suppressed

Emotion can not

David:

T
he soul looks around corners for the man caught in another’s hunt. Dark men are stalking me, planning on silencing me before I can go public on their nefarious activities.

Barreling over dales and ridges, I’ve made excellent time. It’s zero dark thirty and I feel vividly alive with the cold in my face, the escape revitalizing, reminding me of times when this must have been a daily activity. Running from an enemy, and succeeding, is exhilarating.

Whispers of history infiltrate my numbed mind, overpowering the wreckage of emotion storming unfamiliar territory in my heart. It was
so
good while it lasted. I’ve gotta get this shit behind me, over and done, because Carly is an extension of me and I feel like I’ve been amputated.

I’ve lost a lot of blood and keep slipping into hallucinatory territory, and my warped vision isn’t helping.

Zoning out, driving while seeing through goggles that make the entire world an alien green landscape, total recall softly treads, running a movie through my memory banks, allowing me to access secret data.

After the IED exploded and I splayed helpless on the barren ground, in the fog of dust I witnessed a saint, a glimmer, the one with deformed hands and a twisted soul kissed me, told me my name, and since then I haven’t been the same. She resurrected the dead, gave me access to something the government needed, and made me the middle man to shit no one would ever believe.

It’s great knowing from memory that I
am
Master Sergeant David Hearse, but it’s a little late. I swore to protect, yet in the past month I’ve murdered two civilians and threatened to do the same to another, Carly’s ex asshole.

Memory finally returns, that fickle ally whose friendship is never guaranteed.

I’m black ops with a healthy dose of PTSD, and have a shrink (who knew?). According to the delectable Maggie Jordan, PTSD is responsible for my nightmares and sweats. Personally I think I go to her not because she has a degree in psychology, but because she has legs that belong tied behind my head.

Working in complete isolation my only companion was my service K9, Angus. On October the 12
th
I woke when Angus sat up from my bed and growled.

Slipping from the lethargic warmth of the futon I cupped my Glock, staring into the shadows, listening.

The hackles were raised on Angus’s neck, his teeth bared, a disturbing low growl on endless loop in the predawn silence.

I trust Angus with my life. He’s the only person in it who has the honor. He’s not a dog, he’s my best friend and most definitely entitled to the designation ‘person’.

A cold kiss glances my soul. Foreboding riddles my bones with rime when Angus suddenly explodes from the end of the bed, bounding toward danger, the rabid sounds of him attacking an infiltrator downstairs a gurgling strangle shattering sleepiness.

I’m almost at him, the little punk always could run faster than me, when a gunshot slams me to a tragic halt.

The gunfire is deafening, the report ricocheting off the minimalistic layout, the simultaneous yelp scarring my mind. Caution flees, hurtling into the shadows of my home, using instinct to navigate. Man down! Man down!

Charging through my residence in Sweden I slide on glossy floors, my legs giving out in the rush. From the landing I can see him, alone, wounded!

My baby and buddy is unmoving, lying on the rug in the entrance hall. Reaching him in double time I pause to feel Angus’s pulse, leaning down to detect breath, my soul mingled with the pool of blood coating my knees. My best and only friend is dead. I try to staunch the blood from the hole in his chest, a massive caliber, too large to get him to surgery or resuscitate him, but all I do is cover my hands with his blood. It takes me to too many times before this, holding my brothers in their final moments on the battleground, in a hellhole rampant with desert fleas, fucking helpless to save a life. Useless.

I’m cut through, bleeding everywhere the eye can’t see, searching for the cunt who did this. Someone else is about to die, and it won’t be me.

Vengeance poured a cocktail with wrath and I sprint to the den in complete cover of darkness, witnessing the team leaving the president’s wife on the chair of my study. Red-handed!

Caution keeps me silent, sucking in details and intel, formulating a counterattack, deciding what – she’s fucked up bad.

She’d been so tortured she no longer had eyeballs, her nose sewn shut, brands riddling her body, a scalpel strategically placed next to her dislocated foot. Every toe points in a different direction, to me - the accused. They’re setting me up to be a patsy.

To prove my innocence I capped them both, took a snapshot with my phone for insurance. Running, calmer than the eye of a hurricane, but knowing urgency is paramount, I make four copies of the images, stashing them in different locales, and printed four more copies. Hard copies. Those who choose to be blind shall be rendered permanently unseeing. This is a set up and I have to run, I have to run NOW! As a message to the bastards who did this I pin one photo to my front door when I flee into the night.

I have proof I didn’t do this. I even took swabs of their DNA and photos of their fingerprints.

She was the woman I worked for for years, and this is how they thank me? Shit. Markham must know. He knows I was screwing his wife. But why torture her? What intel are they after?

If they didn’t get it from her, they’re hoping they’ll get it from me.

In my Hennesey Venom GT I’m speeding away at 270mph, fleeing Sweden, scrambling because it’s possible my cover’s been compromised.

No wonder they’re hunting me, they think I murdered the first lady!

Recalling memories is like remote viewing. There’s still so much I don’t recall, like why they’d leave Lizzy in my chair. Surely there are others more worthy of personally knowing the first lady and who can take the fall for her demise?

Lizzy?

What the hell?

Her name is Elizabeth Markham, and yet my default is to call her Lizzy?

We must have been close. Really close.

And now on top of the heartache of leaving Carly I’m mourning for Angus. Grief never wanes, it’s as vivid now as it was when it happened.

Why? They’ve taken everything from me. Why would they do this to me?

WHY!

I ran to my cabin in Norway, high up in the icy mountains, hoping to get air to breathe while digging for intel on what the hell is going on. Interpol is gunning for me. It’s a worldwide covert manhunt.

When I hear the sirens encroaching from two miles away, the sound carrying with so little interference, I’m back at square one. I’m out of time
again
. Jesus, do I need a cave like Bin Laden just to get space to figure out who the hell it is who’s framing me?

My record is flawless. I have no motivation to murder Lizzy.
There’s no way in hell I’d turn my back and betray my allegiance.

Leaping the furniture like an athlete taking hurdles I clutch my packed bag, charging into the night stark naked, when I spy the team I served with in North-West Pakistan in 2009.

I still have night sweats from that tour.

The day Steven exploded into a mist of blood, spray-painting every inch of me with my buddy’s guts, I couldn’t breathe. The entire world went dead, no sound penetrated my ears, my heartbeat drumming so fast it was one continuous knell, gunfire slugging into my Kevlar vest.

Stumbling, my legs unable to hold me, suffering shock so severe my bone marrow morphed into toxic plasma, the lack of oxygen veiled everything but the death leaning over me to steal my decayed soul.

The hijab moved away, the sultry smile sweet and deceptive, and then she kissed me, a man feeling like I was on the precipice between life and death, holding my hand - even when strangers lifted me onto the stretcher to smuggle me into the desert.

I’m a prisoner of war.

The devil comes in many guises, and this one was the saint of a life I’d grown so weary of. Death was all I could smell, the iron stench of men slaughtered for a corrupt president.

She dressed my wounds, rewired my mind, gave me hope and freedom. It was so easy. Too easy. From the arid landscape of a barren country I found myself in an oasis, the facility which has no allegiance to the jihad.

Tarinda ran the covert operation, employing me as a free agent, a spy. Now I’m a lone wolf unearthing the decomposing corpses of the president’s left hand man, his right hand man, all of it. President Markham engineered the war, the deaths I’ve witnessed were inconsequential to the bottom line – the mighty dollar. The west has a surplus of women, in those countries where women are aborted there is a market for western women.

Human trafficking is at an all time high, tourists and teenagers go missing every minute of every day. I know where they’ve gone. I know the price of a human life, of a Caucasian wife.

My memories and thoughts muddle into swill, and I know that Tarinda is so much more than anyone thinks. She’s the angel who saved me. She’s the devil who cursed me.

In the quietude of the night, in those hours where I sit alone with my thoughts, with reflection and introspection, it occurs to me: Women are a commodity.

We live in an age of ‘equality’ by expanding the workforce with women (that’s irony in action), pushing children into the school system as early as possible so that they struggle to develop an ironclad sense of self. Women are tired, but they’ve run countries, if not households. So why then, with women rising as far as 10 Downing Street, did we never see the shoe put on the other foot?

Brothels have been around as far back as ancient Greece, termed ‘temple girls’ by the politically correct, and yet I cannot recall ever seeing a brothel for women, where a lonely workaholic can pop in for a quick shag session with a buffed up boy.

They had the power, one woman ran an entire country, and behind her was a matriarch, the Queen of England who’d been around long enough to wield power over the entire commonwealth – and yet the tables didn’t turn. Why? Why didn’t they rewrite history? Why weren’t men shanked?

They didn’t enslave, they didn’t treat as they’ve been treated, instead they remained downtrodden and exploited despite becoming CEOs and vastly wealthy talk show hosts.

Maybe it’s because they have always been spoken to as sexual objects, and reared surrounded with media putting emphasis on cup size and looking good to attract a husband, with one in five women being a statistic of rape, that they’ve simply accepted this as their lot. Literally their lot. They drew the short straw and don’t contest it.

They think voting gives them power, all it did was appease the mob. Voting has never given anyone power, not since Bush did a recount until Gore magicall
y‘
didn’t win’. And those in the know will remember how many ballot boxes went missing that night, and how man
y‘
votes’ got stacked into the wrong piles. Recounts and dumping of ballots started in third world countries, becoming a first-world trend within a year.

Freedom is a scam.

The system turns the majority into workforce slaves, cogs in the economic machine, and worked so hard they don’t have the energy to complain or revolt. The system was designed for compliance, removing children into schools as early as possible was a way to ensure the future is subservient to authority no matter how faulty the system or appalling living conditions become.

Crime rose, illegals flooded the borders, and because no one complained the doors opened and the real agenda began. You are simply a social security number. Your identity has been under constant surveillance since the day you accepted a legal number to travel, to receive payment, to enroll into a school.

Social media is a tool designed to raise young minds with open lives, accepting of perpetual transparency and monitoring even in an age of constant identity theft – to the point that the medium to connect to their friends has become a fashionable and indispensable item.

Living with monitoring means your parents can find you, ‘keep that shit on for your own safety, in case someone kidnaps you’. See the trend? The smart phones track your coordinates, your social circle, your interests and hobbies via the trends you follow, and those collecting intel know everything about you because you even post photos of what you eat and when you dye your hair. Even better, you became so accustomed to having no privacy or secrets that you blindly followed the fad of putting your stick family on your vehicle’s rear window, so every pedophile and criminal knows if there is a ‘dad’ at home, if you have a dog as a warning system, and how many sons and daughters you have.