Killer Series - Book Four
Killer With Ice Eyes
Killer With Ice Eyes
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WARNING ADULT CONTENT
Chapter 2 Shadows of the Past Barry sits with MoJo in his lounge in South Palms Estate on his private Mediterranean Island. He downs a scotch and quickly pours another. Then he drinks that one straight down, only a slight grimace betraying the burning sensation in his throat. “Something on your mind?” Morris asks as he sips his scotch. He holds his glass up in the sunlight coming through the twenty feet tall bay window. He peers through the golden liquid at Barry and says in a fortuneteller’s voice, “I see troubled waters in your future. You are perhaps unhappy with your assignment. You wish the government assigned you to another task.” “No. Not at all,” Barry shifts to avoid direct eye contact with Morris. His muscular chest fills out the black T-shirt, the clean shave and close-cropped black hair giving him the look of a young man just out of bootcamp. But the three lines across his forehead and the beginning of luggage beneath his eyes carries the signs of a man approaching forty. “You are helping the USA in areas where it’s best we stay out of. I’m okay with that. It’s not like we haven’t worked with mercenaries before.” Morris strokes his beard, tugging on the grayish streak in the middle. He gets up and walks to the bar, retrieves the decanter of twenty-year-old scotch and refills Barry’s glass. “Well, then what is it? Because you are drinking my best liquor like water. When you drink for pleasure, you can never drink too much. But when you are trying to drown your sorrows, there is never enough in the bottle. There is only pleasure and sorrow when it comes to drinking. So, which is it?” “It’s Maria,” Barry says definitively. “You really haven’t answered the question.” |
Barry sits with MoJo in his lounge in South Palms Estate on his private Mediterranean Island. He downs a scotch and quickly pours another. Then he drinks that one straight down, only a slight grimace betraying the burning sensation in his throat.
“Something on your mind?” Morris asks as he sips his scotch. He holds his glass up in the sunlight coming through the twenty feet tall bay window. He peers through the golden liquid at Barry and says in a fortuneteller’s voice, “I see troubled waters in your future. You are perhaps unhappy with your assignment. You wish the government assigned you to another task.”
“No. Not at all,” Barry shifts to avoid direct eye contact with Morris. His muscular chest fills out the black T-shirt, the clean shave and close-cropped black hair giving him the look of a young man just out of bootcamp. But the three lines across his forehead and the beginning of luggage beneath his eyes carries the signs of a man approaching forty. “You are helping the USA in areas where it’s best we stay out of. I’m okay with that. It’s not like we haven’t worked with mercenaries before.”
Morris strokes his beard, tugging on the grayish streak in the middle. He gets up and walks to the bar, retrieves the decanter of twenty-year-old scotch and refills Barry’s glass. “Well, then what is it? Because you are drinking my best liquor like water. When you drink for pleasure, you can never drink too much. But when you are trying to drown your sorrows, there is never enough in the bottle. There is only pleasure and sorrow when it comes to drinking. So, which is it?”
“It’s Maria,” Barry says definitively.
“You really haven’t answered the question.”
Barry takes a shorter sip and waits for Morris to sit back down. “Why did you let her go on the mission? You had to know there was a better than good chance she was going to be taken. She could have been killed.”
“Ah, so it is pleasure that drives you to drink.” Morris’ face twists into a sadistic smile. He enjoys toying with the CIA agent. Watching his stone-cold face hold back his true emotions.
“What?”
“You find pleasure in my daughter, but feel sorrow she can be hurt,” Morris puts a fatherly tone to the statement. “Totally understandable. But not to worry, I raised her to be tougher than most. She can handle herself in a rough situation. Besides, this plan was mostly her idea, and you did agree to go along with it. So, what changed?”
Barry finishes his drink and studies Morris for a moment. He can’t tell if he really wants to know what happened in Sudan, if he already knows the details, or if he basically doesn’t care. “I agreed to the plan because I thought she would signal us the first day she arrived at the camp. If the Commander was there, we’d take the camp, if not, we pull her out by nightfall. Not let her spend two weeks in captivity. She was out of control. She went…”
“Hello, Daddy. Barry.”
“Well, speak of the devil.” Morris stands and holds out a hand.
Maria crosses the room and hugs her father. She does a pirouette to show off her new lavender and verdant silk dress. “Do you like it? It feels good to be out of fatigues. Are you two discussing the success of the mission? I just got off the phone with the Sudanese Foreign Minister, a Mister hard to pronounce name, the money has been deposited and he is very happy.”
“Barry was just giving me his critique of… how should I say this… your performance. Go ahead, Barry, continue.”
“Yes, Barry, what do you think of my performance,” Maria’s voice was sharp. She didn’t speak to him on the flight back. She spent the two days after the mission drinking with her mercs, especially Fumu, and avoiding him. Fumu told her when the girls reached their village most of it had been destroyed, burned down, but their families were okay. “And please don’t hold anything back. I can take it.”
“I’m sure you can,” he replied flexing his muscles and puffing up his chest under the black cotton T-shirt. He got up and poured her a drink. “As I was saying, you went berserk out there. Very unprofessional the way you beat those two men to death, well, one man and a boy. I’m sure they did some horrible things to you there, but this was your plan. And for the record, Morris, I was against it. And for what it’s worth, that is exactly why I was against it. Letting yourself get taken prisoner, and as I warned, subjected to all kind of torture… It was not a good plan.”
“How else were you going to get someone into the camp? You think you could have been taken prisoner?” Maria shoots her head back downing the scotch. “You wouldn’t even have left the village alive.”
“She got you there,” Morris joked, “they would have made you for a government man immediately. You have that look.” Morris enjoyed toying with Barry Thomas. He did not want an agent within his ranks. The government, the CIA undoubtably, insisted on it as part of their oversight with their armament contracts. He let Barry in on other aspects of the business to find out what the government knew. He also knew that you could learn as much from the questions asked as the answers given by your rivals.
“You were supposed to contact us the first day…”
“For what? Diambu wasn’t there.”
“And the plan was if he wasn’t there, we get you out. And move on to the next camp,” Barry stares her down. “You showed bad judgement. And your lack of control…”
“He wasn’t in camp the first week,” Maria says emotionless, “you wanted to leave those girls behind to face whatever happened to them. Then they would have known I was a spy; the next squad would have killed me on the spot. However, he did show up to make that arms deal, and we got him.”
“What you did was crazy,” Barry shouts. “And you let the arms dealer slip through our fingers. If you would have signaled us sooner, we would have cut off his escape from the camp. Maybe, ambushed them in the bush before taking down the camp. That’s how you run a professional op.”
“I may have gotten a little rough,” she yells back, “but they deserved no better. This isn’t like an ordinary war. These people are animals, and we should exterminate them like the vermin they are. It is what we are being paid to do. If you can’t handle it, Mr. Special Forces, stay home and out of my way.”
“She did go to extremes in Sudan, but that is not necessarily a bad thing,” Morris interjects, “When details of those people’s death get out, and I will make sure it does, other warlords will not be so willing to take children. What is the axiom? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure.” Morris goes to refill his drink and pats his daughter on the knee as he passes her sitting at the bar. “Do you know why I like drinking in this room?” Morris asks, slipping away from the argument to look out at the Aegean Sea.
“Is it the foot-thick bulletproof glass?” Barry is seething, knowing he’s losing the argument. Naturally, father and daughter would team up against him.
“Yeah, that’s part of it,” muses Morris, “it’s because I can see the world real clear from here. I can see my enemies coming from a ways off. Gives me a real sense of peace knowing who my enemies are and where they are coming from.”
Barry isn’t sure what Morris means, or whom it is directed to, but he knows he isn’t going to win a battle on two fronts. He will have to come back later and talk to Morris. Maria is obsessed with finding this sergeant of hers. He had been briefed on her history by the Agency and so far, she was living up to her reputation. On the missions he was part of, she was reckless, ruthless, and murderous beyond reason. He gives Morris one last piece of advice before moving on, “your enemies might know what to expect from her and not give her the chance to do it next time.”
KWIE
Maria pours herself another drink and stands next to her father at the window. The medieval castle dominates the tiny island. Morris did a little modernization to the structure to make it a comfortable living place, but as castles goes, it is impregnable except from an airstrike. He has anti-aircraft brigades on two of the turrets. There are a few people, mostly generational inhabitants, who aren’t in the BSA.
“What is that man’s problem?”
“I don’t think he objects to you playing rough with the boys,” Morris puts his arm around her shoulder. “I think he objects to you not playing with him.”
“EEYOO! He’s a government man. I don’t know why you allow him to hang around. He can’t be trusted.”
“That sounds like your Uncle Nicky speaking.” He turns her head slightly and lightly pokes the bruise under her eye. “The lavender in your dress almost makes that look good. He does care about you.”
“Well, at least you put him in his place.”
Morris laughs, “Honey, I was speaking to you.”
“What? Me? What did I do?”
“I was trying to tell you not to be looking for your enemies so hard that you can’t see them coming. Remember, if you let people know you are looking for him, he will start looking for you. Don’t become an easy target.”
Maria drops her head. “That arms dealer had the types of weapons Warren would have been able to get his hands on. US rocket launchers, the new ones. I should have called in our guys sooner. He got away; it was my fault.”
“Doesn’t really prove it was him,” Morris lifts her chin, “I can get a hold of them too. And he didn’t get away. I had a second team bird-dogging yours. We have eyes on him.”
Maria leaves the huge hall with a bounce in her step. She wonders why her father didn’t tell her about the other team. But she knows him well enough to know he wasn’t leaving her safety to some government man. She may be a trained killer, but she is still his daughter, and he probably felt he needed to protect her. She wonders what would have happened if she sent the SOS signal. Undoubtedly, he would have leveled the camp to get her out.
The arms business is by far the most dangerous of all the illegal ventures they are involved in. And it was the introduction into this life at age twelve that she became Warren’s and the government’s target. It was also her first job a couple of years later, thanks to her Uncle Nicky.
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“Something on your mind?” Morris asks as he sips his scotch. He holds his glass up in the sunlight coming through the twenty feet tall bay window. He peers through the golden liquid at Barry and says in a fortuneteller’s voice, “I see troubled waters in your future. You are perhaps unhappy with your assignment. You wish the government assigned you to another task.”
“No. Not at all,” Barry shifts to avoid direct eye contact with Morris. His muscular chest fills out the black T-shirt, the clean shave and close-cropped black hair giving him the look of a young man just out of bootcamp. But the three lines across his forehead and the beginning of luggage beneath his eyes carries the signs of a man approaching forty. “You are helping the USA in areas where it’s best we stay out of. I’m okay with that. It’s not like we haven’t worked with mercenaries before.”
Morris strokes his beard, tugging on the grayish streak in the middle. He gets up and walks to the bar, retrieves the decanter of twenty-year-old scotch and refills Barry’s glass. “Well, then what is it? Because you are drinking my best liquor like water. When you drink for pleasure, you can never drink too much. But when you are trying to drown your sorrows, there is never enough in the bottle. There is only pleasure and sorrow when it comes to drinking. So, which is it?”
“It’s Maria,” Barry says definitively.
“You really haven’t answered the question.”
Barry takes a shorter sip and waits for Morris to sit back down. “Why did you let her go on the mission? You had to know there was a better than good chance she was going to be taken. She could have been killed.”
“Ah, so it is pleasure that drives you to drink.” Morris’ face twists into a sadistic smile. He enjoys toying with the CIA agent. Watching his stone-cold face hold back his true emotions.
“What?”
“You find pleasure in my daughter, but feel sorrow she can be hurt,” Morris puts a fatherly tone to the statement. “Totally understandable. But not to worry, I raised her to be tougher than most. She can handle herself in a rough situation. Besides, this plan was mostly her idea, and you did agree to go along with it. So, what changed?”
Barry finishes his drink and studies Morris for a moment. He can’t tell if he really wants to know what happened in Sudan, if he already knows the details, or if he basically doesn’t care. “I agreed to the plan because I thought she would signal us the first day she arrived at the camp. If the Commander was there, we’d take the camp, if not, we pull her out by nightfall. Not let her spend two weeks in captivity. She was out of control. She went…”
“Hello, Daddy. Barry.”
“Well, speak of the devil.” Morris stands and holds out a hand.
Maria crosses the room and hugs her father. She does a pirouette to show off her new lavender and verdant silk dress. “Do you like it? It feels good to be out of fatigues. Are you two discussing the success of the mission? I just got off the phone with the Sudanese Foreign Minister, a Mister hard to pronounce name, the money has been deposited and he is very happy.”
“Barry was just giving me his critique of… how should I say this… your performance. Go ahead, Barry, continue.”
“Yes, Barry, what do you think of my performance,” Maria’s voice was sharp. She didn’t speak to him on the flight back. She spent the two days after the mission drinking with her mercs, especially Fumu, and avoiding him. Fumu told her when the girls reached their village most of it had been destroyed, burned down, but their families were okay. “And please don’t hold anything back. I can take it.”
“I’m sure you can,” he replied flexing his muscles and puffing up his chest under the black cotton T-shirt. He got up and poured her a drink. “As I was saying, you went berserk out there. Very unprofessional the way you beat those two men to death, well, one man and a boy. I’m sure they did some horrible things to you there, but this was your plan. And for the record, Morris, I was against it. And for what it’s worth, that is exactly why I was against it. Letting yourself get taken prisoner, and as I warned, subjected to all kind of torture… It was not a good plan.”
“How else were you going to get someone into the camp? You think you could have been taken prisoner?” Maria shoots her head back downing the scotch. “You wouldn’t even have left the village alive.”
“She got you there,” Morris joked, “they would have made you for a government man immediately. You have that look.” Morris enjoyed toying with Barry Thomas. He did not want an agent within his ranks. The government, the CIA undoubtably, insisted on it as part of their oversight with their armament contracts. He let Barry in on other aspects of the business to find out what the government knew. He also knew that you could learn as much from the questions asked as the answers given by your rivals.
“You were supposed to contact us the first day…”
“For what? Diambu wasn’t there.”
“And the plan was if he wasn’t there, we get you out. And move on to the next camp,” Barry stares her down. “You showed bad judgement. And your lack of control…”
“He wasn’t in camp the first week,” Maria says emotionless, “you wanted to leave those girls behind to face whatever happened to them. Then they would have known I was a spy; the next squad would have killed me on the spot. However, he did show up to make that arms deal, and we got him.”
“What you did was crazy,” Barry shouts. “And you let the arms dealer slip through our fingers. If you would have signaled us sooner, we would have cut off his escape from the camp. Maybe, ambushed them in the bush before taking down the camp. That’s how you run a professional op.”
“I may have gotten a little rough,” she yells back, “but they deserved no better. This isn’t like an ordinary war. These people are animals, and we should exterminate them like the vermin they are. It is what we are being paid to do. If you can’t handle it, Mr. Special Forces, stay home and out of my way.”
“She did go to extremes in Sudan, but that is not necessarily a bad thing,” Morris interjects, “When details of those people’s death get out, and I will make sure it does, other warlords will not be so willing to take children. What is the axiom? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure.” Morris goes to refill his drink and pats his daughter on the knee as he passes her sitting at the bar. “Do you know why I like drinking in this room?” Morris asks, slipping away from the argument to look out at the Aegean Sea.
“Is it the foot-thick bulletproof glass?” Barry is seething, knowing he’s losing the argument. Naturally, father and daughter would team up against him.
“Yeah, that’s part of it,” muses Morris, “it’s because I can see the world real clear from here. I can see my enemies coming from a ways off. Gives me a real sense of peace knowing who my enemies are and where they are coming from.”
Barry isn’t sure what Morris means, or whom it is directed to, but he knows he isn’t going to win a battle on two fronts. He will have to come back later and talk to Morris. Maria is obsessed with finding this sergeant of hers. He had been briefed on her history by the Agency and so far, she was living up to her reputation. On the missions he was part of, she was reckless, ruthless, and murderous beyond reason. He gives Morris one last piece of advice before moving on, “your enemies might know what to expect from her and not give her the chance to do it next time.”
KWIE
Maria pours herself another drink and stands next to her father at the window. The medieval castle dominates the tiny island. Morris did a little modernization to the structure to make it a comfortable living place, but as castles goes, it is impregnable except from an airstrike. He has anti-aircraft brigades on two of the turrets. There are a few people, mostly generational inhabitants, who aren’t in the BSA.
“What is that man’s problem?”
“I don’t think he objects to you playing rough with the boys,” Morris puts his arm around her shoulder. “I think he objects to you not playing with him.”
“EEYOO! He’s a government man. I don’t know why you allow him to hang around. He can’t be trusted.”
“That sounds like your Uncle Nicky speaking.” He turns her head slightly and lightly pokes the bruise under her eye. “The lavender in your dress almost makes that look good. He does care about you.”
“Well, at least you put him in his place.”
Morris laughs, “Honey, I was speaking to you.”
“What? Me? What did I do?”
“I was trying to tell you not to be looking for your enemies so hard that you can’t see them coming. Remember, if you let people know you are looking for him, he will start looking for you. Don’t become an easy target.”
Maria drops her head. “That arms dealer had the types of weapons Warren would have been able to get his hands on. US rocket launchers, the new ones. I should have called in our guys sooner. He got away; it was my fault.”
“Doesn’t really prove it was him,” Morris lifts her chin, “I can get a hold of them too. And he didn’t get away. I had a second team bird-dogging yours. We have eyes on him.”
Maria leaves the huge hall with a bounce in her step. She wonders why her father didn’t tell her about the other team. But she knows him well enough to know he wasn’t leaving her safety to some government man. She may be a trained killer, but she is still his daughter, and he probably felt he needed to protect her. She wonders what would have happened if she sent the SOS signal. Undoubtedly, he would have leveled the camp to get her out.
The arms business is by far the most dangerous of all the illegal ventures they are involved in. And it was the introduction into this life at age twelve that she became Warren’s and the government’s target. It was also her first job a couple of years later, thanks to her Uncle Nicky.
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