Unlikely Bed Fellows

“My, it’s rather warm today. I know you don’t know this, but I am sitting in the shade, so don’t worry about sunscreen.”

The breeze made the tops of the trees close to where my parents were buried sway.. After everything that had happened, it seemed like a good idea to talk things out. Mom and Dad had turned into excellent listeners.

I was a freshman in college. My parents were coming to visit. Topping the hill on a two-lane road, a black Cadillac was facing them at full speed. He told the first responder the story. Before he passed out from blood loss, he said his last words to Mom were, Oh shit.

He slammed on the brakes when the truck he was driving veered to the left. My mother was first at the scene of the accident.

I lost them both in a matter of days. Mom was gone in an instant, crushed by a drunk driver who didn’t care about anyone but himself. Dad fought for his life, but the odds were against him. He was bleeding internally, and the hospital they took him to was a joke. They had no equipment to diagnose him properly, let alone treat him. They just watched him slowly fade away, and I was powerless to do anything. I arrived just in time to see him take his last breath.

I learned later that the man who killed them had run out of beer during halftime and was on his way to get more. He was driving a massive car that his wife had bought him after he had smashed his truck into a tree. She thought that would keep him safe from his own stupidity. She didn’t care about the lives he endangered every time he got behind the wheel.

Most drunks have someone who enables them; in this case, it was his wife.

She helped him destroy my family.

My neighbor was my rock when I needed it most. He helped me sell the homestead and put what I wanted to keep in storage while I finished school. But then, Connie and I were married, and she died from bone cancer. Her dad and I became even closer after that. It was he who suggested I join the Air Force.

I thought burying myself, my emotions, and my anger would work well until we ended up in a pointless war in places that most Americans couldn’t find on a map. When the enemy was no longer a person or persons but a target, I focused on winning the war.

“Mom, I’m struggling with this relationship stuff. You knew Connie and loved her as much as you loved me. I suppose she’s told you what happened by now. I’m still here in the thick of things. It feels like my assistant was using me, and now there’s Sylvia.”

A random squirrel hopped through the trees above them. The memory of Connie and I laying on a blanket by the lake while watching clouds came alive.

“Look, it’s a rabbit being chased by a turtle,” she said.

I didn’t see it, but a shark was chasing a giraffe. I told her what I saw, and she laughed.

She turned to look at me. As she turned, she grimaced. “What’s wrong?”

“I slept wrong or something. My arm hurts when I touch it.”

Thinking back, I should have pushed her to see a doctor. Nobody thinks about having an incurable form of cancer in their late teens. We were invincible. We would live forever.

A crow chased the squirrel. After a bit of chattering from the squirrel, the crow won. He landed above me, eyeing my lunch. I tossed a potato chip away from the grave. He landed and then took off with it. It seemed we had picked a peaceful place for my parents to rest.

Connie was in another cemetery down by Highland Park in Dallas. It was a sad day when I left the war to lay my mentor, friend, and father of my bride to rest next to his wife and child.

“Why has everyone left me?”

The dark glasses hid my tears.

I didn’t expect an answer. Talking to a headstone was nuts enough.

After Connie passed from cancer, Connie’s father introduced me to Hank. He was the son of another pilot who was also attending college. I suppose the thinking was to distract me. I was clearly lost. On my parents’ death anniversary, I would come here to visit with them to reflect on my life. Hank knew of this schedule.

Hank, my friend, and future boss, was one of the few who knew me well. Twenty years later, he would have stars. I resisted the promotions because I knew that promotion to Full Bird Colonel meant a desk.

Hank told me over the years that I had taken unnecessary risks. I defended my actions. If I were shot down, I would take one for the team. I felt that way; I thought that way, and he knew it.

Getting me out of the cockpit was his way of looking out for me. Encouraging me to get into the world of digital mayhem he felt would be safe for me and the enemy. Hank didn’t know that powerful people were not satisfied with imprisoning some punk with a keyboard. There were people I knew that made the Chicago mafia boys look like girl scouts.

I thought Hank didn’t know this, but I later learned he knew more than I did. I made it my mission to rid the world of scum. When companies lose money, the customer ends up footing the bill.

There was an organization known as the Syndicate that also hated scum. They recruited the best of the best. There was an episode years ago that placed me on their radar. I was on leave when someone held up a liquor store. I was there. Pointing a gun at me was the last thing anyone ever wanted to do. I will never forget it.

It amazed the store owner at how quickly and efficiently the perpetrator was extinguished. I sent him to hell with others like him. He handed me my bourbon and told me to leave before he called the police. He thanked me but knew that the DA in that city was more concerned for the criminal than the good Samaritan. He destroyed the video recording of the event before he called the police. The news that night gave a different rendition of the event, with the store owner stopping the assailant.

Months later, I visited him. Once again, my bourbon was on the house. He told me that the word was out not to mess with the owner of that store. The Syndicate knew the entire story, and I was on their radar.

Hank suspected it was me, but he didn’t say a word. The best of the best trained me.

A couple walked by me on the sidewalk, breaking my train of thought. I glanced at them and then back at my coffee. The random call of a blue jay warning a squirrel had me lean back to watch it play out. Focused on the tree limb, a familiar voice brought me to the present.

“Am I interrupting?” Hank asked.

I stood up and turned around to see him standing behind me. He wore jeans and a polo shirt instead of his usual uniform.

“Hank!” I exclaimed. “What a surprise.”

He shook my hand with a firm grip. “Good to see you again.”

I followed his gaze to my parent’s graves. He smiled sympathetically. “How have you been?”

I shrugged. “You know how it is.”

He nodded again. He looked around the cemetery.

“It’s peaceful here.”

“It is.” I agreed.

He checked his watch.

“Listen,” he said. “I have little time, but I came here to talk to you about something important.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Something important?”

He nodded for the third time.

“Yes.” He reached into his pocket and took out a folded paper.

“It’s about your next assignment.”

I felt a surge of curiosity and dread.

“My next assignment?”

He handed me the paper.

“Yes,” he said. “Look.”

I unfolded the paper and read it.

My eyes widened.

“This is from your new boss.”

***

The next day, I was back at the airport, heading to Florida. Hank brought me the orders himself, as Valerie and he had spoken. Someone had found out about our affair. I didn’t realize that Valerie had been sent to be my liaison between the Syndicate and myself.

A cyber-attack had shut a city down. But that was just the beginning.

The job was getting redundant. Easy. Too easy. I traced bits and bytes with my tools, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

What I didn’t realize is that not only was I making a name for myself as being ruthless with criminals, but… dangerous. Dangerous to the wrong people.

Finding the ransomware was easy enough. Decrypting the data was child’s play. But stopping the extortionist from getting rich on cryptocurrency put me on the radar.

Since Valerie and I had been an item, she was also on the criminal element’s radar.

A text alerted me someone had kidnapped her.

Hank texted me later that night, and I knew that time was running out.

Valerie was allowed to text me an extortion note. I was to send the money they lost from my sleuthing of the Trojan horse released on the city. I would send me instead. Hopefully, they didn’t know my skill set included lethal solutions for criminals.

Tracking the text led me to a small island in the Bahamas. Getting there undetected wasn’t going to be easy.

I chartered a small jet and headed to San Juan, but I knew that danger awaited me.

The data told me that is where the signal originated. Disguised as a congressman, I passed the people looking to kidnap me, but their goal was to take me out. The elaborate scheme to kidnap Valerie by thinking we were lovers would not work as they predicted.

They locked Valerie in a hotel suite with no way out or phone to call for help. They wanted me, and she was bait.

I sat at the local bar listening to the locals. I wondered if any hotel staff would talk about someone locked in a room.

Her kidnappers knew I would come for her. They must have laid a trail of breadcrumbs. A man with an earring and a ponytail smoking a cigarette was at the bar. He placed a to-go order. The order was a favorite of Valerie’s.

I watched which floor the elevator stopped on after he disappeared behind the sliding doors. Floor 8 was off-limits, according to the front desk.

 Flying a mini drone around the building that night, I knew where she was and knew the number of guards. I left a beacon on the roof before I went into action to retrieve Valerie.

Employing my ninja-like moves, I took the stairs down to floor 8. Two guards in the stairwell playing cards were two dead guards quickly enough. I extracted the information I needed on the number of guards and who they were before the last one’s death gurgle echoed off the cement walls.

I texted Hank about my exact location. A black ops group sent a helicopter for an extraction which would occur in thirty minutes. Pushing a button on a remote control set off a minor explosion in the basement. The building went dark. Since the relay to the generator was also damaged, the building stayed dark. 

Using my night vision equipment, the perpetrators of the crime met their makers one by one.

I heard Valerie scream behind a door. A failed radio response from one terrorist brought about a Plan B regarding the prisoner. Plan B was to kill her. The surprise for the guerillas is Valerie was no slouch regarding self-defense.

A dim flashlight spun on the floor as Valerie choked the life out of the guard that was sent to kill her.

The flashing light strobed our faces as the guy in the chokehold dropped to the floor.

“Are there more?”

“There is one in the bathroom who was feeling ill. He should be dead by now.”

“Poison?”

She nodded, pointing to a ring that held enough cyanide to kill an elephant.

“What about this guy?”

She gave his neck a final twist as we both heard the loud pop from the bones breaking. Even I flinched with the cracking sound as it echoed off the window.

“Fifteen minutes to spare,” I said.

“So, now my cover is blown, I’ll have to move again,” Valerie said.

We took the dark stairwell to the roof, and on cue, a helicopter touched down long enough for us to board.

Landing on an aircraft carrier. They were kind enough to loan us an F4 Phantom. 

Once back in the States, Valerie and I headed to Texas. She changed her name to a new alias. Living in my same home, I knew I would always be a target. The people that died mysteriously that fateful night were written off as violence from a rival gang. It thrilled the Syndicate to have the foot soldiers of one of their enemies annihilated.

Valerie was an enigma.

Our friendship started out as if she were a therapist. I didn’t know I was being groomed to be a member of the Syndicate. The Syndicate didn’t answer to a civilian-run system of laws. There was no congressional oversight. When dirty work was called for, they called on us, or people like us.

Today, Valerie was a seasoned operative who could execute an operation demanding lethal skills...

We ended up back at her new apartment in the mid-cities. Valerie aspired to be friends with benefits. It became clear she was shallow... With my emotions in such a state of flux, we became friends that shared a mutual respect for who we were and what we were capable of. We also shared a bed from time to time.

Our special connection, only recognized by a select few, was strong as long as we were both single... With the profession we both shared, the bond was understandable. A typical civilian who relied on 911 for a pain in the groin would never understand us, our friendship, or what we did for a living.