SAFE HAVENS: Shadow Masters (A Sean Havens Black Ops Novel Book 1) (19 page)

Sean nodded without uttering a word. He started to move away from the table. Indeed he did look like a broken man to Lars.

“Now, Sean, hear me out and then it will be all you. You have never treated me like a guest in your home; you treated me like your own. I don’t take that lightly, and I would never want to disrespect you, especially not in your home. But I made a promise to Christina that I would never snoop around you and sniff under stuff that I have no business sniffin’ under. That time has passed and I can no longer keep that promise. I know you don’t work for some bullshit business consulting contractor doing some bullshit whateverthefuck you all call it. I did a full BI on you, and you hardly exist. You aren’t a normal profile. Your profile is eye candy.”

Lars took another pull of the wine knowing Sean wasn’t going to walk away.

“I am guessing you are CIA, and if you aren’t, you’re something damn close to that type of business. I don’t even know much more about your past aside from little bits and pieces. You have been pretty good at keeping me away from any real details by just giving me little nuggets here and there until you can change the topic away from you. I want it all out on the table now. The time has come to let me in. Keep out all that classified mumbo jumbo on how you bugged the Queen of England’s toilet or something to see how many times she shits in a day. Just spare me the stuff where you say all dramatically, ‘If I told you I’d have to kill ya.’ I’ve had enough of this cockamamie outlandishness for a while. You owe me.”

Havens turned and walked away.

“Where the hell are you going? We had an agreement.”

“We never had an agreement, Lars. I am going upstairs and I am going to see what you did to my window. I am going to see where my wife died. Then, because we have finished that wine, I am going down to the basement and bringing up all the beer I can grab in my arms, and I will tell you what you want to know to the best of my abilities. And then we will have a proper wake and funeral for my wife and your sister. Then I have to find the best specialists in the world to make sure Maggie is OK. In the meantime you can find out what happened. I trust you with that like no other. Is that a deal?”

“Deal!” Lars shouted back. “One more thing, after we talk and get a couple things done tomorrow, don’t make plans tomorrow night.”

Havens leaned over the banister, “What’s tomorrow night?”

“You go upstairs; take all the time you need. I’ll go down and get the beer. Then when you tell me everything first, I’ll share my surprise.”

Part II

I am the nightmare, right where the soldier

Overstands warfare, caught in the crosshair

The moment when focus becomes more

Than what’s noticed by the starving locusts

The burning of the pride, turning of the tide

Searching through the fight

Snuck in with the shadow that broke the castle

Escaped the cell, let hell out of the capsule

—X-Ecutioners,
from “(Even) More Human than Human”

Chapter 24

S
ean Havens had witnessed a great deal of violence aftermath in his career. He had been responsible for creating such blood-spattered scenes in rooms throughout the world—but none so personal as this. Never children.

Seeing the room where Christina and Maggie were shot was unbearable. It looked to Sean as if a fifty pound bag of blood exploded, touching red to all corners of the white room and soaking the thick pile carpet. Sean replayed the scene in his mind of what must have happened. He sobbed at a blood smear on the carpet, imagining Christina crawling across the room to be beside her daughter cowering against the wall. A dark red mass remained surrounded by lighter red misting where Maggie took the head shot and the round exited. Havens walked over to the bullet-pocked walls and put a finger through one of the holes. He rested his head on the wall willing it all to go away, then recognizing the futility of this, moved to his daughter’s bed for comfort. Bedtime stories and tickle fights. He willed the happy memories to cloud his visions of horror.

After an hour in Maggie’s room, Sean retreated downstairs to evade the ghosts echoing his failure as a protector and provider. He took a deep breath upon sitting down at the table then cracked a can of Guinness and slowly poured it into the glass.

“You’re three behind,” said Lars, reaching for another can. “I decided to get a head start while you were upstairs. It’s horrible up there.”

Havens deflected the last statement. “Don’t you want to put those in the fridge?”

“I put a bunch in the fridge. These are the ones we are working on now. I don’t expect mine to get warm. I am in the fourteen beer stages of grieving.”

Havens raised his glass to Lars. “To Christina, the best wife a man could ever wish for.”

“And sister. I love you, sis.”

The two brothers in marriage clinked glasses and drank to their loved one.

Havens looked around to a cupboard reserved just for him. He opened the door to retrieve a bottle of Dalwhinnie Highland single malt scotch.

“Going for the good stuff are we?”

“This was recently given to me by a British SAS soldier I did some work with. I could use a little bit of extra power.”

“SAS, huh? Best fill me up.” Lars put his glass down. “In my business, the bad guys get killed in their homes when they have product in there. In your business, it appears that you are the product. And you live here with my sister and niece. Now let’s have it; spill your beans.”

Havens wasn’t sure what he was going to share. He thought a little fabrication here and there would be necessary. Lars really didn’t need to know about Havens’ life, training, capabilities, and expertise. He would give him just enough.

“So you know how you said if we told you we would have to kill you?”

“Yes,” replied Lars, not sure if this spilling of the beans was such a good idea now.

Similarly, Havens wasn’t sure that that was the best opening for discrete disclosure.

“In the units I have served with, we would have responded, ‘No, we wouldn’t kill you, we would kill your family and make life so unbearable you would wish you were dead.’ In my case, I may help them set things up so we know what family or person to kill, but we’d have someone else do it.”

“Kind of like what just happened to you.”

Havens paused. A look of bewilderment frosted his face. For the first time since getting the news of his family’s tragedy, he took a look at his life. Maybe Lars was right about the past coming to haunt him. He needed Lars’ help after all. Lars had great instincts and could see both big and little picture.

Havens decided then and there to share it all.

Chapter 25

S
ean Havens’ father had been an Army drafted Vietnam veteran whose war souvenirs of empty ammunition magazines and clips, canteens, hats, and canvas pouches managed to fall into Sean’s toy box. The military items provided Sean hours of fun when he was old enough to play soldier or cops and robbers. He was a decorated war hero by his eighth birthday. The number of imaginary confirmed kills Sean had achieved by that age rivaled entire infantry platoons’ kill stats.

By the age of ten, Sean’s fascination with Vietnam led him to write almost all creative school papers on U.S. Army Special Forces, the Ho Chi Minh Trail’s strategic importance, and the history of Unconventional Warfare. Coming from a conservative Republican family with a long history of military service, Sean was simply a young patriot in the making.

The neighborhood that was Sean’s battlefield proved to be complete with allies. To the south of the Havens home was a street filled with actual WWII Jewish concentration camp survivors and a mix of refugees from Poland.

Mrs. Lewicz in particular was especially kind to Sean. The number tattoos on her arm intrigued him. She tried to cover them up most of the time, but one Halloween Sean saw them through her sleeve as she reached to put candy in his plastic pumpkin. Seeing his discovery, she pulled her sleeve up to show Sean. Her husband, who wore his as a badge of honor, invited Sean back to talk about it sometime.

Sean spent hours with the Lewiczes in the summer as Mr. and Mrs. Lewicz encouraged him to go after the neighborhood’s imaginary Nazis instead of the imaginary Viet Cong, who they described as simply protecting their homeland and being used by other bad people. Sean liberated the Lewiczes on a number of occasions. Mr. Lewicz took a break from mowing the lawn to hide while Sean swept the countryside and gave an all clear. He saved Sean on more than one occasion by pointing out a sniper in a crow’s nest and a Nazi bastard still hiding in the brush.

The Feldbaums, just behind the Havenses’ house, had also escaped Nazi Europe. At least the sisters had. They too took an interest in Sean’s inquisitive nature and on occasion invited him and his family to their Passover and Rosh Hashanah celebrations. They preferred not to join in the war games and demanded that Sean check his weapon at the front entryway.

Sean blew the traditional shofar horn and tried his hand at reciting the Jewish prayers and blessings that he had heard at both the Feldbaums’ and Lewiczes’. Sean’s father, a staunch Baptist, chided his son about having a Bar Mitzvah before his confession of faith in the church. Sean would laugh and continue reciting the Jewish prayers he had learned. That Christmas Sean received another bible from his father. It didn’t have the effect that Sean’s father had hoped for. Young Sean had shaken the box. It had to be the Crossman CO2 BB pistol he had asked for. But it wasn’t. Sean didn’t want to be armed by “the sword,” he wanted the hardware.

Just north of the Havens were a number of other Jewish families but next door was a Korean family, the Kims. Their children were much older, but from time to time Mrs. Kim would babysit Sean and his sister. They would eat lunch at the Kims’ on those occasions. Mrs. Kim would make Sean’s sister a grilled cheese sandwich while Sean would eat whatever Korean food Mrs. Kim was making for dinner. She even gave Sean a bottle of Korean garlic hot sauce that he would put on his eggs at home. This too received an eye roll from his father who would receive a good morning from his son in Korean. Sean could now construct greetings and short phrases in three languages.

Another half block over were his parent’s friends, the Singhs. The Indian family had a daughter in Sean’s class. The two got along well and in time the Singhs were also on the circuit of Sean’s cultural interests.

Sean would often trade sandwiches at lunch with their daughter, Prithi Singh. Prithi was embarrassed to eat the cucumber chutney sandwiches in front of her predominately white peers, who found the food to be just as different as she, and Sean was sick of PB&J and the requisite mushy bruised apples that everyone at his table ate. Prithi’s mother became suspicious when her daughter started asking for two sandwiches a day, but realized that Sean was growing and obliged.

The Kims moved suddenly. Evidently, Mr. Kim didn’t just have a laundry business. According to Sean’s dad, the police had said that Mr. Kim would lend money to people and hurt them if they didn’t pay when he wanted it back. Sean thought that was pretty cool and made perfect sense. Sean was angry that the people who Mr. Kim had helped ratted him out to the police. It wasn’t the reaction Mr. Havens was hoping for.

Pakistanis moved in to the Kim house. Mr. Fatani, the man of the house, was a short ugly man who was always cross with his wife and her sister. In the warm months when windows were open the Havens could hear a lot of yelling coming from the Fatani home. They had two very young girls who would sometimes come over and play on the Havenses’ swing set. One day Sean asked why their dad was always so mad. They said he was just like that all the time and shared with Sean that both of their mommies slept in the same bed with their dad. When Sean asked his dad about it, he smiled and said it was “cultural.”

With other moves came other neighbors. All had something that Sean could learn from. When a boy named Kent moved in, it changed his life.

Kent DuBoise and his family moved to the area in the summertime. They went to the same church as the Havenses, which made it the duty of Sean’s father to push his own son on them as a potential playmate. It was perfect. They were Christian and they spoke English. Enough of this foreign influence on the boy, thought Sean’s dad. The family would serve as a good foundational role model for Sean in the eclectic neighborhood.

Sean wasn’t too pleased with the prospects and shuffled his shoes over to Kent’s house one day on orders from his father. Sean heard mouthed explosions and the rapid fire gun rapports sounding off through the backyard. Kent was holding a black plastic M-16. When Sean asked what Kent was doing, he replied, “Killing VC.”

The two boys killed most of Chicagoland’s VC in the backyards and alleys that summer. Kent was a bit off personality-wise at times and didn’t get along with many of the other kids with the exception of Sean. When school started Sean found himself having to protect Kent from the other kids. It cost Sean friends, but every time he got in a fight and his parents were called, Sean’s dad stood by his son. He was proud that Sean was standing up for something and someone.

Sean was appreciative of his father’s pride and understanding but it still didn’t help the situation. He remembered coming to his dad, who was reading a paper, and presented the dilemma.

Sean’s dad never lowered the paper, and just said, “If you can walk away from it walk away. The words will make you stronger as a man if you can take it. If they are picking on you physically, you hit them hard and hit them often.”

“What if they hit back?”

“Then, Sean, you hit them harder, and you hit them faster, and you don’t stop until a teacher pulls you off. Go for the biggest one. Don’t hit the chin. Hit the nose, hit the lip. If a teacher pulls you off try to get in a last kick to the kid’s privates. Overall, make whoever is hurting you bleed and make them regret it. You are still young, Sean. Big kids will still cry at this age when you make them bleed. Heck, if you make them bleed enough at my age, they back down.”