SAFE HAVENS: Shadow Masters (A Sean Havens Black Ops Novel Book 1) (26 page)

“Thanks…I’ll be in touch, Sean.”

“I’ll tell Red you said hi.”

“Tell him he is still number one,” as Draeger raised his middle finger.

Havens pulled out the cut cigar he had purchased in the bar for the walk back to the hospital. He struck the match preparing the tip and inhaled his much needed treat.
Good to see another friendly face. Seems like Draeger is keeping it together a bit.

Draeger pulled out his mobile phone and typed a text to Harrison. GUD 2 GO. Draeger deleted the message, feeling more like a tween texter than experienced operator. He typed again. GREEN.
Much better. Wonder if there will be any wounded antelopes drunk at the hotel bar by now. Have to check that out before trying to turn in. Can’t sleep anyway.

The reply came back from Harrison almost immediately. RGR. GUD2GO.

Draeger smiled seeing the GUD2GO that he had considered, immediately glad that he took the professional highroad and put away his phone. He looked out the cab window and marveled at the city. How he was going to enjoy turning it upside down. He glanced at the back of his driver’s head and then looked to read the name on the placard below. REZA SHIRAZIAN.

“Reza, huh? And where may I ask are you from?”

Draeger knew the answer before it came.

“I am longtime in Chicago.”

“But where were you originally?”

“Detroit.”

“And before that?”

“New York. You been to New York?”

“Yes, I have been to New York. Where were you born?”

“Why you like to know?”

“I’m just curious. I saw your name and knew a Reza once. I was curious as to where you were from, originally, where you were born.”

“Ah.”

“And?”

“I am Persian.”

There we go
. “So you are from Iran.”

“Yes. You have been? I don’t think so maybe.”

“No, I don’t get out much.”

“So how long are you in Chicago?”

“I think I just decided that I will try to leave tonight.”

Of course you continue to haunt me. Why did I even ask? Persia, Iran, my personal Hell. Why won’t you let me sleep? Havens, you don’t even have half the training of our old teams. How can you possibly sleep with no trouble to your soul? Maybe now you can’t as your own horrors have come to roost. I’m just getting started.

Draeger continued to gaze out the cab window at tourists walking the streets. With a finger to the glass, he double-tapped each pedestrian in the head. Willing them all to die. Women and children first.

Sean exited from the elevator. He could still smell the smoke on his clothes despite the nice breeze outside. The halls were dimmed to let the patients rest. Visiting hours were over. Havens was an exception. He watched from afar as the orderly walked down the hall. When the orderly approached Maggie’s room, Havens noticed he slowed and started to turn his head. Assuming the orderly might be shifting to look behind him, Havens stepped back into the water fountain nook between the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Havens scanned to see if he could find anything with a reflection. He spotted a polished handle on the fire extinguisher box fixed to the wall. He could make out the orderly’s back, now turned to Havens. Havens emerged to see the orderly stepping into the room.

Havens rushed down the hall quickly and quietly taking long strides, his feet meeting the linoleum tiles briefly with the outsides of his soles. He wasn’t taking any more chances on the oddities occurring in his home world.

As he approached the room, the orderly quickly exited.

“Hey, what are you doing in there?” Havens demanded with an air of authority.

“Nothing,” the order said as he exited from the room, not even looking at Havens.

“Hey, wait. I am not done.” Havens reached for the orderly’s shoulder. When Havens’ right hand touched the right shoulder of the orderly, the man spun around and already had Havens’ hand in a pressure lock twisting at the joint and simultaneously squeezed pressure points in order to incapacitate Havens.

The offset size of the large orderly and Havens’ slightly smaller frame provided an opening. Havens flowed with the movement increasing its direction. Ducking and stepping in through the twist of arms Havens got behind the orderly grabbing a hold of the man’s larynx.

“Now let’s try that again.”

The orderly managed to communicate through a suppressed airway, “Just seeing if she was doing any better.”

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“I just do; it’s my job.”

“That’s not your job. That’s for the nurses and doctors.”

“Sir, it’s my job. I am supposed to protect her.”

“What? From who? Who are you?”

“Let go and I will tell you.”

“Tell me and I may let go.”

“Sir, I can take you out. Please let go before I make you let me go.”

“If you can take me why am I holding your throat?”

“I am supposed to keep an eye on you too. Make sure you were safe.”

Guardedly, Havens released the orderly.

“Who are you?”

“Name’s Whittington.”

“And Mr. Whittington, why are you the fairy godmother orderly assigned to watch me and my daughter?”

“Because I work for someone with your interests in mind, given your prior employment in government.”

“Are you government?”

“Not exactly. I am a contractor.”

Everybody is a contractor these days.

“Why are you wearing an orderly uniform and badge?”

“So I fit in.”

“And what if you had to perform medical duties?”

“I do. I was Special Forces 18-Delta. I’m a trained medic.”

“So what other things can you do, Mr. Whittington. Brain surgery, banking?”

“I paid for your wife’s funeral arrangements on orders from my boss.”

“OK, Delta, you’ve got my attention.”

Two cups of coffee later, Havens had learned all about Whittington’s deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He hadn’t noticed the burns on Whittington’s arms until his sleeves were rolled up. Whittington had been medically discharged from the Army with a broken vertebra and severe burns to his upper arms and torso from wounds received in battle. Due to his limited physical abilities, Whittington was no longer eligible for service but had been identified by the local Silver Star chapter as a viable candidate for their Family Protection Program.

For the past year, while undergoing rehabilitation and therapy, Whittington was assigned various tasks to protect or assist the families of servicemen who were overseas. Initially, Whittington assisted some wives who needed to go to the police for various harassment claims or instances of neighborhood or family abuse cases. In most cases he assisted spouses who were negligent in their parental duties due to situations that had occurred while the other spouse was deployed overseas.

“Why haven’t I heard of this program before?”

Whittington looked at his watch and downed his coffee. “You wouldn’t have unless you needed assistance. The process is this: if a soldier overseas is having personal problems during his or her deployment due to an external issue affecting their family back home, they let their superior officer know. The superior officer can pass that information on to a readiness and deployment entity that then makes a judgment call and triage evaluation. If a local military support group can handle it, for example their house burned down, someone lost a job, or their house was going into foreclosure, the ‘ticket,’ as it were, doesn’t escalate.”

Havens nodded in understanding.

“Now let’s say a soldier is deployed, his wife is back home and her brother or the neighbor is beating on her or harassing her but the authorities have not been called or are not willing to do anything, we can act as an advocate. If something happens that is not to a high enough level that cops would get called for 911, we can help. Like, perhaps we escort the woman home from work, check out her house when she arrives, and make sure no one’s there waiting for her. That sort of stuff.”

Havens sat quietly looking at his cup of coffee. “Sure could have used you guys.”

“Well, actually we were involved. See, you were not technically government or military, so we had to jump through hoops from an internal billing process standpoint. I know that sounds horrible, but that is what went down. When your daughter was threatened, she actually found us on Facebook. She said her father was in the military or government but we couldn’t find your records.”

“I see.”

“Later when we got the authorization, we were too late. But in this case, it likely would have been handled by law enforcement anyway since they were already involved. We could have made an introduction to assist in an augmented role to the police though. I suspect that is why we felt compelled to pay for the arrangements.”

“Who pays for all of this?”

“I don’t know exactly, but it is a blend of DoD funds and private estate and corporate donations. It’s very low key so it doesn’t become a requested service or taken advantage of. Also it gives us some latitude as to how we think a situation should be handled. We prefer to dispatch ourselves for the right situations. It also seems to be favoring those service members of the special operations community.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, it isn’t very politically correct, but some feel that general purpose forces may already be inclined to have some domestic issues based on studies of demographics, economics, social status, education…”

“Alright, I got your legal disclaimer. I won’t hold it against you.”

“Bottom line, for the soldiers the United States has already invested so much time and money into training, this is a benefit designed so elite forces can focus on the matter at hand as opposed to matters at home. We have a motto, ‘We Have Their 6,” which means the family’s back. We know our brothers have each other’s backs in the field.”

“This is amazing. So why are you still here?”

“Well I have been trying to leave for the last ten minutes to make my rounds so I don’t get fired.”

“No, I mean why are you looking out for me and my daughter if I am back?”

“Bit of work, bit of personal. Your daughter seemed like a good kid. I felt bad that we couldn’t help in time and I felt like I should look in on her from time to time.”

“Bullshit.”

Whittington looked from side to side and lowered his head. “Well, frankly, your home situation was pretty messed up. Cops were going in a bunch of directions. We looked at it from a team perspective and thought it didn’t make sense. Looked like someone was doing all this because of you, not because of them. Since there wasn’t much information on you, it seemed like we should check it out. If you work in a team and you were being targeted for something you did in the so called line of duty, we figured shit rolls downhill and someone else could be in cross hairs next.”

“That’s pretty intuitive thinking.”

“We do a lot of predictive analysis based on indicators and scenarios for better warning. Not so much in my group, but we have a national support unit that spiders out to the regional and local level.”

“And can you carry firearms if you are on a protective detail?”

“No, sir, not unless we already had a license to carry. We have some off-duty cops that help us from time to time, licensed P.I.s in the ranks, stuff like that.”

“And you will up and go when I am cleared from this being a so called expanding issue?”

“Probably not. I am doing this job part-time while I am doing the other. It was a perfect fit. I may consider going into medicine even though I am a bit older. I saw some pretty bad shit in the sandbox. I need to clear my head and see how I can help people best and still make a good living in case I ever have a family.”

“OK. Makes sense. I think we can all use a little help clearing our heads. Sounds like you have your shit pretty squared away. Thanks for cluing me in on all this.”

“You really think you could take me?” Sean asked.

“I really wasn’t sure, sir. Just didn’t want you to hurt my back. I felt you pulling on my new skin. Grafts took pretty well and I didn’t want to have to go through that stuff again.”

“Fair enough.”

“What’s your first name?”

“My friends just call me Whitt. I gotta go. I’d like to hold on to this job for a while. I may transfer over to Loyola though. Trying to get there by the end of the week.”

“Well good luck.” The two shook hands.

As Whitt left, Havens cleared the table and finished the last drop of coffee. He was slowly getting hooked tighter and never saw it coming.
This Silver Star group is all over. Could be a good gig for a bit.

Whitt left the cafeteria area and headed back to the nurse’s station to check on the rest of his tasks before heading home. He stopped by the bathroom to take a quick piss. The door opened as he was finishing up.

“Ah, hey, Tom, um, I don’t think we were properly introduced.”

The orderly, Whitt, turned around to see the security guard from his first day.

“Oh hey, yeah, good to see you again. I’d shake your hand but my hands are full.”

“No problem.” The old security guard kept his eyes at shoulder level or higher. “I’d say Semper Fi, based on what I saw on your application. Say, I’ve got some questions for you. I had you pegged as Army. But when I called up the University of Chicago Hospital, which you have listed as your former employer, they had no record of a Thomas Lawrence. Being a good Marine myself, I had to chuckle at the thought of Thomas Edward Lawrence. Don’t get to meet a man with the namesake of Lawrence of Arabia every day. You even a Marine? I know you ain’t Lawrence of Arabia.”

With that the orderly whipped his leg out, catching the security guard off balance and sending his feet into the air. Twisting in the opposite direction, the orderly threw his arms around like two baseball bats hitting the guard in the chest. Unable to catch his fall, the guard was flung backwards and slammed his head onto the floor. The orderly quickly put on a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and gave a forceful death blow to the guard by raising his head and smashing the back of the skull to hemorrhage the brain. The orderly then pulled his own sleeves up to the shoulder and balled a fist into the toilet while repeatedly flushing. Water cascaded from the bowl onto the floor. The toilet water flowed to the security guard. The orderly, careful not to get his shoes wet, picked up the guard’s torso and bent the knees quickly to ensure the soles of the guard’s shoes were wet. Drying off his own arms, he pulled down his shirtsleeves and exited the bathroom, leaving the victim of an accidental fall behind on the floor.