IA: Invincible Assassin

  IA: INVINCIBLE ASSASSIN

  Copyright © 2018 John Darryl Winston

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the 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 prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by BHC Press

  under the H2O imprint

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  2018946367

  Softcover ISBN: 978-1-947727-70-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947727-87-8

  Visit the publisher at:

  www.bhcpress.com

  My all, my everything, Dominique Wilson

  My fab editor, Allison Maruska

  My persistent publishers, BHC Press

  To Johnnie Winston

  Present Day …

  Is death white or black or any color at all?

  Or maybe scarlet like blood, the true elixir of life?

  I watch the thick liquid drip from the crumbling wall

  While the slime in my grasp prepares to die.

  Two boys have just brought down a gang in an abandoned, dank, musty space once called a Market Merchant store. And now the final search for answers has taken one of them to an even darker place. Puffs of air escape the lungs of those in attendance and disappear long before they reach the many broken lights above them.

  “You’re gonna admit everything you did, or I’m gonna finish what I started, right here and now,” threatens Naz, standing over a defeated gang leader.

  Harvis understands Naz’s meaning as he kneels next to the fallen thug. He opens the voice recorder app on his watch and then taps the red button. He nods to Naz, indicating he is ready for the confession. Other gang members litter the floor in pain, consciously observing but too afraid to move.

  “You can start whenever you’re ready,” Harvis says, eyeing the thug.

  The two stand in judgment, feeling nothing for this scum who has just taken the life of an innocent lady.

  “I’m not sayin’ nothin’.” The gang leader trembles.

  Harvis looks back up at Naz and nods. Naz flexes his mind. The thug grabs his throat. His eyes go wide as he struggles to breathe. He reaches for Harvis’ arm only to have Harvis punch it away violently.

  “You better talk; I won’t be able to stop him soon.” Harvis laughs.

  Finally, the fallen thug concedes, mouthing the word, “OK.”

  But it’s too late.

  Harvis toys with him a bit, not able to help himself. “I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you.” He moves a little closer, turning sideways as if that will help. Something catches Harvis’ eye. He asks Naz to release the thug, and Naz complies. Harvis has words with the gang leader, and before long, with two fingers to the neck, he applies pressure to the thug’s carotid artery, robbing the gang leader of blood flow to his brain. Harvis is enjoying this, life seeping away from the undeserving. Now, you will die. The gang leader fades.

  Four months earlier …

  What do you do when your best friend’s kid sister is murdered, his only sister? You dream, or at least you try. And you keep waking up all night long, dreading the next day’s funeral. Back and forth, fully awake and half asleep you go, falling out of the dream and back into the nightmare of the real world. That’s me right now.

  I clutch my pillow and wrap it around my head, hoping to block out the world that has snatched me from my preferred reality. I was flying high over white clouds with nothing but blue skies overhead. I had hoped to surprise my mother in Beijing. I wonder how fast I was flying, how long it would’ve taken me to get there. She’s coming home next week, just before Christmas. A voice somewhere between a trumpet and a tuba rips through.

  “Attention, Harvis!”

  “Dad…” I start to pound my fist into the pillow but catch myself. “Do we have to do this every morning?”

  The General’s voice comes muffled through my closed door. “Sleep is for the weak, and dedication—”

  “Is not the adversary of accomplishment … I know!” I roll out of bed, landing on the floor straight into push-up position. “Give me a break,” I finish under my breath.

  I stopped counting my push-ups a long time ago. The goal is to do as many as I can until I run out of gas, so I crank out push-up after push-up, my body at work while my mind contemplates a different challenge. How can I help my friend, and what would that look like? I have no idea what Naz is going through, and I won’t pretend. I just need to be there, but how? Meri was all Naz had. And now that she’s gone, I’m sure he feels he has nothing to live for, or worse, nothing to lose.

  I grunt and collapse onto the floor. I immediately turn over and maneuver to position my feet under the bed, and push-ups become sit-ups. A poster of Bruce Lee watches over my bed.

  The General knocks on the door. For all the power my dad possesses, he respects my privacy without exception, which is cool. Although I don’t think he’d ever admit it. Just his way, I guess. Before I think too much about it, I prevent a smile from forming.

  “Come!” I grunt as my forearms hit my quads, and I return to the resting position.

  The General enters and stands in silence until I finish my sit-ups. I go longer than I think I can, feeling a sense of power in making him wait. But then I become uncomfortable with my father’s unwavering presence and eventually lose the battle of patience.

  “Good morning, Dad.” I stand and then slowly elevate on my toes, so I can almost be eye to eye with him. “What’s up?”

  Never missing a thing, he looks at my feet. “Good morning, Son … fourteen next month. You’ll get there, soon enough. We’re leaving at 0800 hours, which gives you approximately fifty-seven minutes to get ready.” He looks over his shoulder at my suit hanging on the closet door. “Bring your overcoat; a storm is coming, the first of the winter.”

  It’s one of the rare times I don’t see him in full uniform dress blues. He wears a beige polo shirt with dark brown dress pants. The General never enters my room with his dress blues on, I think because he doesn’t want me to have to rise and salute him in my own bedroom—also cool. It’s just too formal.

  The General holds a rectangular, black box. He presents it to me as if I’ve won some award. Maybe I have.

  “What is it?”

  “Open it. As you know, I won’t be here for Christmas, but your mother will. It’s an early Christmas present.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I take the top off the box. “Two watches?”

  “They’re not watches, although that is one of their functions. They’re audiovisual position (AVP) locators, accessible anywhere on the planet through satellite relays. The wearers can keep track of each other no matter where they are with pinpoint accuracy.”

  “Annnnnd … what am I supposed to do with them?”

  “It’s military-grade technology. You won’t find those in any store. Think about it.” He turns to leave. “Could come in handy.”

  With a raised eyebrow, I watch him leave. He’s up to something. He always is. The General doesn’t do anything without an ulterior motive. He is tactical in that respect—all respects. The General closes the door behind him, and I look at the AVP locators. Keep track of each other? It’s obvious he wants to keep track of me.

  I have no use for the AVP locators, so I put them in my top dresser drawer in between my perfectly rolled socks. I crank out two more sets of push-ups and sit-ups and then hit the shower
. How will I help my friend? I haven’t seen Naz since they released him from the hospital, and he’s not returning any of my calls. It’s clear he doesn’t want to hear from anybody.

  Hot water cascades over me, and words rush in.

  Solitude is my weapon and words my ammunition

  Sticks and stones are useless in this definition

  To turn a phrase or construct a verse is my defense mechanism

  The firepower I ultimately use to bring meaning to this premonition

  Metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole

  It’s not the cause so much I’m after but the effect that appeals to me

  Literary bombs, landmines, mortars, and rounds devastate discretely

  And set the stage and tone for a new world order completely

  It is a place I love to be, where I can escape, become one with the water. I take flight again as I did earlier this morning in my dream. If I could fly like Superman, I could watch over Naz until he weathered the storm. I laugh—fly like Superman.

  I didn’t believe in superheroes or superpowers, just dreamed about them—until Naz. He’s angry, and he’ll try to get revenge. I have to protect others from Naz and Naz from himself. He’s not ready to be a hero—he’s more likely to be a villain—so it’s my duty to keep an eye on him—but how? If I follow him, he’ll use whatever ability he has to eventually sense me as he sensed Soul and me that day we followed him to the Incubus Apostle’s lair. I need more, something else.

  I dry my hair and put the towel around my shoulders—keep an eye on him, that’s the key. I grab my phone to see if he’s returned my calls or texts. There’s nothing, nothing but Soul and … Hailey. I need to return her messages, but I don’t want to give her the wrong idea. I like her, but I need to complete this mission. I need to focus. I read her text.

  How’s your friend

  I respond,

  Don’t know

  Hailey sends back,

  Wanna hang out over Christmas vacation

  I answer,

  Going to stay home for Christmas

  She replies,

  K

  I resist the temptation to text, “thank you,” “bye,” or “happy holidays,” because I know the conversation will go on and on, and I need to cut it short. I have to watch him, watch him wherever he goes … watch him … watches …

  I take the AVPs back out of my dresser and threaten to smile again—but how will I get him to wear one of these?

  I stare out the passenger window of the General’s Escalade. I am only vaguely aware of the transformation from my father’s suburban home to the once green but now dormant brown, rolling, wide-open rural spaces to the cold gray world of the cityscape, of the Exclave. And with the Exclave comes the snow. I watch the flakes hit the car window and immediately melt. The General drives more than half the ninety-minute trek to the funeral before I find my words. The irony, a wordsmith in search of words.

  “Dad.” I pull the rectangular box from the backpack at my feet. “What if you wanted … let’s say…”—I turn to him—“to keep track of someone without them knowing it?”

  The General smiles as if he’d expected the question, pulls a small manila envelope from his shirt pocket, and hands it to me. Always up to something.

  “Be careful. If you drop it, you’ll catch hell finding it,” he warns.

  I look inside the envelope and then empty the contents out into my palm. It’s a light brown, tiny circular piece of cardboard—no, rubber—about half the diameter of a dime. There’s also a small booklet. I examine the miniature disk and know exactly what it is: a tracking device.

  “You only get one chance to plant that when you peel the paper off the back. The adhesive is permanent. Use your phone to program it to link to one of the watches.”

  I smirk as I look out of the passenger window. We are stopped at a light, and a homeless man with a leathery face approaches, his hand out for a handout, fingers protruding through a worn woolish glove. The light changes, and we pull away. I escape another debate with the General about why we should or should not patronize the homeless.

  “You’ll have to make up a story for your mother about where you are while she’s here, something about basketball and Coach Fears would probably do the trick. But if you get caught…”

  I look at him, not sure what he means. Sometimes it takes a second. He’s always cloak-and-dagger, so cryptic. What else would I expect? At the very least, it keeps me on my toes.

  “Are you familiar with the term plausible deniability?” he asks.

  “Yeah, that means your name is Wes, and you’re not in this mess.”

  He nods. “And make sure you spend some time with your mother. She’ll only be here for two weeks this time.”

  “I always spend time with her when she’s here,” I say and then realize I sound defensive. After a stretch of silence, I clear my throat. “I was thinking. Since I conceded—”

  “Conceded?”

  “Since I didn’t make a fuss about going to International Academy for high school, I was thinking I could take the semester off from there this summer, work on my writing, maybe get my mind right for ninth grade.”

  “Do you think you’re ready? Remember, it’s not the institution; it’s the individual, and change is good.”

  Silence is the academic answer for what we both already know. The General’s maneuvers have prepared me well. I spend the last part of our journey programming the tracking device.

  THE GENERAL PULLS up next to the curb in front of the cemetery. “Give everyone my condolences.”

  “What time do you have to be at the airport?”

  “In one hour and tw … I have time.”

  The snow is still coming down, not hard but steady and beginning to stick on the manicured lawn inside the cemetery gates. I put on my black hunting hat and move to get out of the car. The General grabs me by the shoulder. “Your orders are to observe, discourage, and report, only.”

  I nod.

  I stand solemn at parade rest, my hands in the small of my back and my feet shoulder-width apart, the same way we stand before a game while the national anthem plays. Soul and Coach stand to my right and the rest of the team, minus two, to my left. Ham is in custody for his involvement in Meri’s death, and Naz is MIA. Or is it AWOL? Either way, he’s nowhere to be found. A clergyman stands near Meri’s grave with Bible in hand, reciting the eulogy. On the other side of the grave, a stocky man dressed in a colorful skirt (or whatever they call it) with a matching hat and stockings plays “Amazing Grace” on bagpipe. The music seems appropriate but the performance part a bit out of place.

  “Do you think he’ll show?” whispers Soul, wiping his eyes.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, what are we gonna do? He hasn’t been to school either.”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  “What do you mean?” Soul’s voice cuts through the solemnness.

  “Shhh …”

  This is only the second funeral I’ve ever been to. Two years ago, when I first came to live here in the Exclave with Coach Fears, we lost Jose, one of our teammates, to a drive-by shooting. Besides me, he was the only other sixth-grader on the basketball team at the time. Coach and the rest of the team attended the funeral back then, too. It was one of the first times I got a chance to see what Coach meant by family, that we should always be there to support each other. It’s what he holds most sacred.

  It’s a different look than what my parents hold up as family—together in marriage, a spiritual and religious union, but more often than not separated by thousand of miles, my dad in service to his country and my mom to the business deals she brokers.

  But there seems to be more people at this funeral—hundreds. There are so many of them, some can’t even see the grave. Very few of us fit under the tent covering the casket. It speaks to the power this ten-year-old spitfire must’ve wielded in her life. I can’t help but feel guilty that I didn�
��t get to know Meri better. I could’ve written some words as a tribute to her. Maybe I still will.

  Afterward, the clergyman gives words of encouragement and support as people linger, leaving flowers and paying their last respects.

  I pull up the collar on my peacoat and the flaps down on my hat as the snow continues to fall.

  Coach, who had left Soul and me to pay his respects to others in attendance, returns. “Have you heard from your brother?”

  We both shake our heads.

  “I’m worried, Coach,” says Soul.

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up,” consoles Coach. “Give ’im time. He’ll need it after something like this, but he’s also gonna need you guys at some point so make yourselves available.”

  “No doubt, Coach,” says Soul.

  I nod.

  We start toward the cemetery exit, and I hesitate, realizing he’s here. He has to be. There’s no way he would miss his sister’s funeral. He just doesn’t wanna be seen, doesn’t wanna be around people. Naz never did.

  “Hey, Coach. I’m gonna stick around for a while. I’ll walk back.” I turn toward the grave. Many still congregate there.

  “I’ll hang with you, Wordsmith. I don’t have no place to be,” says Soul.

  “That’s OK; I wanna be alone for a little while.” I give Soul and Coach hugs, as they’re both big huggers. Me … not so much.

  “Suit yourself,” says Coach.