ShadowShot : L'enfant Guerrier Read online

  She started to cry on the phone while she was thanking me and telling me how kind I was. I told her all I wanted was for her to be safe.

  After I got word that she had received the money and had taken off, I could breathe easier. Now it was time for me to go under deep cover. I didn’t know if the hit team who had pretty much botched the job had been slowed down. It didn’t make sense to take any chances. For a few moments I entertained the thought of going back to the Congo and doing my own hit which they certainly wouldn’t have expected. It would bring closure to this problem. If there wasn’t anyone there to pay for the contract there wouldn’t be one. The only problem with that was if the woman and her children had been in my family, I would have been doing the same thing.

  17

  TIME TO GET TO COVER

  I had a meeting with George and told him that I needed to take a break. The Frenchman’s death after all this time, was really bothering me.

  He asked, “Is something wrong?”

  I said, “No, I just need to chill out.” I didn’t tell him about the Frenchman and we had never talked about the contract. Whether he or the Company knew about it I didn’t know. I said I needed to go away for about a month or two. I was freelance so that was all right.

  He said, “Of course we can’t continue to pay your monthly salary while you’re gone.” I told him that was okay. I understood. I could tell he was a little concerned but he let it go.

  It was kind of weird. I knew that I could not completely trust him but I really had genuine affection for him. He was like the uncle I never had and I believe he really liked me as well. Maybe it was because he was the closest thing, and the only thing I had to call family any more. We shook hands, and I told him I would be in touch.

  I thought it would be a good time to do some traveling and go places I had wanted to see. Also by bouncing around and not staying in one place too long I’d be hard to track. Just to be on the safe side, I didn’t really want the Company to know where I was headed. I paid one year rent ahead of time, thinking that if I had been tracked to my apartment, paying the rent would keep someone busy waiting for me to return. I packed up a few important things like my 97 and put them in a secure storage. These days I knew how to get a fake identity and even a passport. I took the train to Spain, stayed in Madrid briefly, purchased a motorcycle, and cruised to Portugal and from there got lost in Morocco. I went back to Spain and took a plane to Australia. I had spent three months on the road. I would check in with George now and then, just to stay in touch.

  I told him I wasn’t really ready to come back to Paris yet. He seemed to be fine with that. Quite a few women had been asking about me but otherwise no news. Whenever I was ready I could come back and go to work. I wondered about him saying no news. Maybe he meant that he knows about the contract and was letting me know that he hadn’t heard anything. Of course maybe that wasn’t it at all. I wasn’t really sure what technology George had available to him to tell where I was. When I checked in I did my best to try and make it as confusing as possible. To his credit, he never asked me exactly where I was, only if I was doing well. Moreover, concerning the contract, I was pretty confident there would be no way they would be able to figure out where I was. George was the absolute only person with whom I stayed in contact.

  I was really enjoying my time. It was carefree, first-class when I wanted, or down and dirty. Of course there was a string of overnight romances. I liked not always looking over my shoulder or always being on guard with my words and appearance. It was nice to be able to meet someone have a conversation, and not have the ulterior motive of gathering information.

  When I was in Paris there never really seemed time to sit down and think about my life. The pace was just too fast. You wouldn’t think going to parties, sitting in outdoor cafés having nice dinners, and dancing the night away would be work. Actually I was always working in a way. I was always on the job. Ears and eyes open for anything of interest.

  The Germans however were another matter. They clearly needed to be punished for their actions during the war. Sick scum like Hans could not be allowed to continue to live. I was glad his end came by my hands and that I had been able to rescue those poor little girls. It made me sick to think that there were other people out there like him.

  But had I gone too far with Hans? Was it not far enough for what he really deserved? It bothered me that I had tortured him, and even more so that I didn’t have a problem with it when it was happening. I felt as if I was taking a step closer to being somebody who I didn’t want to be, even if it was for a good cause.

  I tried to erase thoughts of Hans, the little girls and the torture. Even though she had left unexpectedly, with only a note to say good bye, my memories of time with Angeline were beautiful. I couldn’t help but smile at the remembrance of those intoxicating days and nights we spent together, however brief the interlude.

  18

  THREE BAD DREAMS

  What haunted me during the day began to plague me at night. I started having really strange nightmares. Three of them were repetitive. In the first one I was only an observer. Hans was standing trussed up and naked. There was a man working him over with a knife but it wasn’t me. I seemed to be watching.

  In the next nightmare I was not just an observer but an active participant. Hans was standing over someone waving a knife at them. It was a little girl. He was in uniform. I knew I couldn’t let him hurt a little girl, so I ran up to him and stuck a knife in his back. It didn’t seem to hurt him. He just turned around and suddenly he was not in uniform anymore. He didn’t have any pants on and he was wearing a T-shirt with the big swastika on it. He seemed very tall.

  He looked at me and said, “Why did you do that? She’s just trash and has no life anyway.”

  The knife in my hand suddenly turned into a big sword. His member was sticking straight out and I whacked it off in one slash. It was lying on the ground. I skewered it with the end of the sword, held it up in front of his face and said, “Was it worth it?”

  Then I pushed the blade, member and all, into his mouth and out the back of his head. He crumbled in front of me. I checked to see if the little girl was okay, but when I looked up, she was not a little girl. She was a tall woman looking down at me. I thought why is she so tall, but then I looked down at myself and it was because I was so short. Really short. She walked over to me and put her hands on my shoulder and smiled. Then I’d wake up in a sweat. It would always end by first morning light. It wasn’t a good way to start the day.

  The last nightmare had escalated into a blurring of sex and violence and was maybe the worst. It seemed the most real.

  My sexual mentor, who I knew as Angeline, was sitting in a chair. She had a dress on and it was pulled up above her waist. Blood was leaking down her legs.

  She said, “Jack I’m really sorry that I didn’t tell you it was a job. I did love you. I will always love you. But you’re so young and I’m 20 years older than you. Soon I will look so old compared to you.”

  “No you’ll always be beautiful to me, but the blood. Did you just have a baby? Is it my baby? Am I the father?”

  “No Jack you didn’t make me pregnant. I haven’t given birth. Are you here to help me now? I knew you would come, I knew you would Jack.”

  “But where are we? What are you doing here? What happened to you?” She didn’t answer. Smiling she put her hand out and she said, “Kiss me Jack.”

  I thought she wanted me to kiss her on the hand, so I took her hand and went to kiss it.

  She said, “No. Kiss me on the lips like a man kisses his woman.” I did as she asked. Suddenly I realized I was I so short. She was sitting and our heads were level.

  She said, “I will always be with you Jack”

  The loud report of a shot pierced the air. I would bolt upright awake.

  Wet with perspiration, with beads on my forehead, there was no way for me to get back to sleep. The words, “Kiss me on the lips like a man kisses his woman,�
� would be ringing in my head. I knew that some dreams were nonsense. Others were entangled with some incident that had happened in your life. Certainly, it was Angeline was in the beginning of my dream but by the end she had changed to someone else. Someone I knew but couldn’t remember.

  For a period of about a month I would often have at least one of those three nightmares, sometimes two during one night. I tried analyzing them myself. Hans represented the darkness. Angeline was the only woman in my life who was important to me. I was the protector against evil. Deep inside I knew there was more to it than that.

  I was in Thailand at the time doing the beach thing. If I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep, at least I would be able to catch up in a hammock during the day. Sometimes I would stay out all night partying just to avoid the dreams.

  Thai women are some of the most beautiful in the world, and very friendly. When I visited there, I was often approached by beautiful women asking if I would like to have a girlfriend during my vacation. It wasn’t exactly like they were prostitutes. It was more like you had a girlfriend while you were there. You’d pay for whatever it was that you did with them. They never asked for money but I’d always give them a nice present when I left. Even with a beautiful woman in my bed for the evening, the dreams would still come. This had to stop.

  Knowing I didn’t want to go back to Paris, George would ask me if I wanted to take a job while traveling. He could make the arrangements. I thanked him but said I still wasn’t ready. I decided what I needed was to get out to one of those quiet little islands, rent a bungalow, bring some good books and just hang out to clear my head. No booze. Not that I was ever big on drinking a lot, and never to the point where I was drunk. Even as a teenager I didn’t like being out of control, and in my present lifestyle I could not deliberately render myself into a vulnerable position. I did arm myself with strong sleeping pills for my island retreat. I thought that if I could start to get through some nights sleeping without dreams maybe I’d shake them off.

  I started thinking that maybe my life was not going in the best direction. I did the old pros and cons. Pros being I loved being home based in Paris. Both of my jobs were exciting; the money of course was great and although I realized it was silly, I did like George and felt like he was the uncle that I never had. Those were all the pros I could really come up with. The cons, not necessarily in order of importance were, I felt in some way I was betraying people that I would meet in the line of work. True I never became close to any of these people if you discount the closeness of sleeping with the same woman a few times, but never more than a few times. All the partying was kind of shallow. I felt as if I was longing for the life I knew growing up with my folks, the wilderness experiences that I’d shared with Frank, were totally missing from my life.

  After analyzing the pros and cons I started to realize, all the running around with different women, was certainly exciting for a young man, but it wasn’t what I really wanted. What could be better than the love Frank and my mother had for each other. I believed I could really love Angeline, or whatever her name was, but I suppose I was just a job for her. I wondered if I would ever find what people described as a soul mate.

  Then there was the other part of the job. There was always the danger of the job going wrong and being killed, or worse. These people that I was supposed to eliminate must’ve had friends and relatives, lovers, someone who would want to revenge them. Probably even Hans might’ve had someone who cared about him, although I cannot imagine why. I never knew if there was or would be someone looking for you, a son or brother or sister, maybe even someone who had lost money because of my intervention. Not to mention that my lifestyle in Paris was certainly not low key. It would probably be a smart thing to quit my association with George while I still had only done a few jobs for him, before I made too many enemies.

  Of course, there was the contract out on me that could no longer be taken lightly. Short of letting the contract be fulfilled, the only way to dodge it was not to let them find me, hope that they got tired of looking for me, or I did them first which I ruled out. There were two other possibilities - asking George if he could arrange to have them cease to exist; or buy my way out of it. I doubted the Company would want to get involved and due to the nature of the problem, I doubted the family would accept coin in trade.

  Occasionally the death of the mother and her two children would intrude in my dreams. Thankfully that didn’t happen often. If only I could’ve only saved them there would be no contract. What a shitty deal that night turned out to be, and it wasn’t over yet.

  Not having resolved those concerns, I was sure that George would soon expect me to take on more challenging roles. Of course that would mean more money but it would also mean more of the problems that it came with it. I had to wonder if this mysterious company, I really knew nothing about, was really the left hand of God rooting out evil, or were they just making money?

  By the late 60s and early 70s, the Leave it to Beaver, Father knows Best era, of believing in everything that your country did and said was over. I’m sure the more aware and savvy understood that long before most of us, myself included.

  As the decades drew closer to the new century, blind faith in what your government told you became less and less. Even knowing this, I did not love my country any less. I was 100% American and knew that there was no better place on the planet Earth where a person could live.

  It was one thing to go on with everyday life, but another thing entirely to make life-and-death decisions for other people because I was told they were bad. Did I really have the right to be the angel of death? Did I really want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder wondering if a car was following me too close? What it meant, if someone in a restaurant seemed to be paying too much attention to me? Was I being followed? Did I want all the drama that went with this life style? Where is the point of no return? How close am I?

  I really felt bad that I hadn’t been there for my mother and grandmother. Frank was my role model. He Fought in the war but that was different we were attacked and if we hadn’t gone to war it would’ve come to us again and worse if the Germans had got the nuke first they would not have hesitated to use it. In addition, we would all be driving Volkswagens if we were even that lucky. Then there was my mother telling me on her deathbed that Frank was not my paternal father that was confusing for me.

  Thinking of my mother, I was once again reminded of her last words to me. Frank, my role model, wasn’t my paternal father. But who was? I wondered if I should ask George for help in this matter. He seemed to always have a way to find out everything. Maybe he would be able to help me.

  Death had silenced my mother as she started to tell me about my other life. She was sorry that I had never been told. She seemed to feel that I should know how it was influencing the direction my life was taking. It was obvious that the list of cons was considerably larger than pros.

  On that little island sitting in front of my little bungalow I made my decision. I was done. I wrote George a letter explaining why I felt it was best for me to sever my relationship with the Company. I gave him some of the reasons, but left out a few that didn’t seem appropriate. I mostly thanked him for the opportunity he had given me, and told him if I ever changed my mind I would let him know. I didn’t think I would. It just wasn’t the life I wanted for myself.

  I finished by saying, “I’m going to miss you George. You really were like an uncle to me.”

  I would mail the letter when I got back to the mainland and then leave Thailand immediately. I had to wait three more days before the boat would come for me at my little island retreat. The nightmares had dissipated. Whatever the reason, I was grateful. For the first time in one whole week I hadn’t even had one. I was back to my normal sleeping habit, which had always been good. Perhaps just making the decision not to go back to work provided the relief I needed.

  I wanted to start concentrating on what my mother had said just before she passed aw
ay. I needed to start finding answers. Unfortunately the best place to get those answers would probably be in France but going back there now was out of the question. I realized that things I didn’t understand about myself were possible clues to another past life. I had a lot more to think about. One thing that I tried not to think about, as much as possible, was the last pack trip with Frank.

  19

  THE TRAIL RIDE

  1957

  My dad (Frank) and I were always extremely close. Frank was a man’s man in every way. He didn’t have my mother’s savoir-faire or cultural background. He made up for it by being a real gentleman and a loving husband and father. He had a great sense of humor too. Being quite the outdoorsman, he would put meat in the freezer every winter. When I got old enough he would take me hunting with him. I loved our trips together. We’d always go by horse. He frowned upon hunters getting up in the high country with vehicles. That wasn’t his style.

  One night at dinner, he said, “Jack I’d like to go up into the mountains one more time.”

  I said, “Why dad we’ve already filled the freezer.”

  “I know son. I just want to go up and look at some new country. If we see something that feels right we might take it. Could be the last chance for the season.”

  I had already made some other plans for the upcoming week but he seemed like he really wanted me to go. He told me that my going with him would really mean a lot to him. I thought the tone he used was strange.

  We left two days later. We planned to be out for about a week, enjoying the warm weather for this time of the year. There wasn’t much snow on the ground yet. We rode for two days up into the mountains. We would make a camp for about three days and then head down. The ride up was very pleasant. We talked while we rode. It was a nice time.