American Terrorist (The Rayna Tan Action Thrillers Book 1) (6 page)

“Are any of them... in the field... like me?”

“Nope. Too narcissistic to care about the greater good. If they were, they’d be lousy at what I want them to do. Now you’ve met one side of Fidelitas. Time to meet the other side.”

***

Rayna and Barry descended to the parking level. The elevator opened to reveal a brand new fire engine red Ferrari convertible. Barry tossed her the remote. “Signing bonus. Not bad for a first car and brand new driver.”

Oh, to be young, sexy and driving one hot car! As they took a slow drive from downtown to the freeway, it seemed as if everyone who glanced in their direction did a double take. Obviously, the first look was at the car. The second look fixated on either the driver or passenger or both. Their thoughts no doubt ranged from envy to murder to fantasy. Envy for the quarter-million-dollar car, or for the old man passenger who was obviously a sugar daddy. Fantasy to be able to drive the car or its driver. Murder of the girl by women accompanying boyfriends, lovers or spouses who gawked at the hot Asian babe behind the wheel.

As Rayna hit the highway, she was hit with an overwhelming desire to unleash the power hidden beneath the car’s hood. “This car got any special James Bond features like a cloaking invisibility feature?” she grinned, glancing over at him.

“Only in the movies, Rayna, but...” Barry read the gauge on one of the numerous gadgets and tapped it with his finger. “Long range radar detector. No cops for seven miles.”

Three seconds later, the noiseless scarlet thoroughbred was at a hundred and twenty and climbing. Suddenly, in the rearview mirror, there was a state patrol vehicle gaining on them with siren blaring and light bars flashing.
 

Rayna pushed the brake to slow down. “Did you buy the radar detector off eBay? If so, you’re not getting your money back.”

Barry turned his head to get a better view. “Gun it. Now!”

Rayna’s military mindset kicked in. While a civilian’s natural instinct would be to ask “why?” in a situation like this, especially when being ordered by a state patrolman to pull over, a soldier never ever questioned commands from the team leader.

The Ferrari jack-rabbited just as the state enforcement vehicle pulled behind. A second later, a shot rang out, just missing Barry, who ducked below the windshield. He reached for yet another gadget and turned it on. “Zig and zag. Don’t let them get a clear shot!”

The brand new driver got her first test by fire. The sleek red missile wove in and out between cars, speeding up, slowing down. On two hundred yards of straightaway, she hit a hundred and sixty miles per hour.

The driver in the patrol car was no slouch, matching Rayna in wits, recklessness and skill. Not so the sniper. Obviously not used to hunting in an erratic, jerking high-speed vehicle, his shots were random and far off the mark. But it only took one shot to change everything.

Thank God it was a shot from the Ferrari that effected the metamorphosis. Barry, his revolver in ready position, waited for a critical fractional moment of stability to release fire.

Bullseye. A shot pierced the windshield of the Ferrari’s predator and entered the nose of the driver. Blood splattered the glass and the car caromed into the guardrail with a fireball explosion.

“Turn back, Rayna.”

Rayna obediently turned around and headed back to the flaming wreckage.
 

Barry leapt out and took a quick look at the victims—Japanese. “Head back to the office, Rayna.”

***

 
“Excuse me. I need to use the washroom, Ahi-san. Too much Hibiki.”
 

“Japanese whiskey too strong for you, Sanderson-san?”

“I’m not quite the man you are.” John Sanderson got up, bowed to the aged Japanese man, and left the room.

Ahi-san whispered to his younger associate, Kota. “Everything is done?”

Before the thirty-year-old man could answer, Barry stepped in with Rayna. Barry was still in his suit but Rayna was masked and clothed in the tight-fitting outfit of a ninja.

Immediately, Kota rushed at Barry but Rayna stepped in front of him and grabbed his left arm, twisting it.

Kota, an experienced martial artist, street fighter and athlete, somersaulted, following the motion of Rayna’s twist to diminish its impact.
 
He jerked his arm away from Rayna’s grasp and grabbed her hair.

He yanked hard, jerking Rayna’s head back, then followed through with a blistering punch toward her stomach. The drive landed with powerful impact but had little effect on Rayna. Years of Special Forces physical training had given her rock hard abs.

And an even harder punch.

Her right arm launched a twisting blow to Kota’s nose, breaking it.
 
As he was dropping to the ground, Rayna’s knee rose up, hitting him directly on the chin.

Kota dropped unconscious to the floor.

Ahi-san remained stoic throughout. He knew what was happening and what was going to happen. He would not dishonor himself by begging for his life. “You should not have done that, Barry-san. When my friends find out, they will not be happy.”
 

“They will never find out.” Barry looked up at the ceiling to a camera which had recorded the event and said, “That was for what you did to my friend’s son.”

Ahi-san’s faced wrinkled. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Barry reached into his pocket and pulled a small Colt pistol, the same one he had used decades ago as a member of Delta Force. He fired two shots—one into the heart of Ahi-san, the other into the heart of Kota.
 

“Everything is done now, Ahi-san.”
 

In fifteen minutes, there wasn’t a trace of the activities that just happened—a cold, clinical execution by two experienced purveyors of death.

***

 
“We have been acting for Ahi-san all this time, but this was the first time he came out himself as well. He always sent a representative. He kept saying that he wanted to increase his stake but I insisted I wanted to meet him personally before discussing it.”

“So why did he try to kill us?” Rayna asked.

“My death was not his goal—it was yours. He knew that I knew he was Yakuza and he demanded ultimate obedience. He wanted to show me he was in complete control... he was wrong.”

“You mean that was about money? That’s nuts.”

Barry shook his head. “No, Rayna. Once you have a few million bucks, it’s no longer about money. How many houses do you need? Can you really taste a fantastic wonderful difference between a two hundred dollar bottle of wine and a ten thousand dollar bottle of wine? Does it matter if you drive a Mercedes or a Bentley?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m still in a rental and my only vice is eighteen-year-old scotch.”

“To men like Ahi-san, it becomes about power, influence and legacy. Not money for money’s sake.”

“But it’s meaningless. Once you’re dead, you’re dead.”

“Not everyone espouses that Christian value, Rayna,” Barry told her. “Pharaohs had the Sphinx, the Chinese had the Terra Cotta warriors, the Mayans had their pyramids... Ahi-san and others wanted monuments of filthy lucre.”

Chapter 6
 

An hour later, huge redwood trees filled Rayna with hope for the future—something she hadn’t felt for a while.

Barry pointed to a turn-off that was enigmatically marked “Resort.” A quiet double lane road meandered for ten minutes before they arrived at the “Resort.” There were only five other vehicles in sight: a Tesla, a Range Rover, a Lexus and a couple of motorized carts. A complex of half a dozen two-story log buildings, the Resort oversaw a crystal blue lake. Two black-tailed deer drifted through the parking lot as Rayna and Barry got out. As they walked to the Resort’s reception area, a swarm of black and orange-winged monarch butterflies took flight.

A surprise greeted them as the automatic doors to the lobby opened. Julio and Helena were there in living color and in the flesh. An even bigger surprise, Helena bobbed a six-month-old in her arms.

“Welcome, Rayna!” smiled the happy couple.

“Omigod. You and you and a baby? I never even guessed you were a couple, let alone had a kid.”

“I think we were pretty busy doing other stuff and didn’t really have time to get acquainted,” beamed Helena.

“I would never have guessed you were a mom!” Rayna said.

“You mean mothers can’t have a nose-ring or mauve hair or...” Helena lifted her top to reveal a pair of monarch butterflies flanking her navel. “…tattoos?” She shook her head. “Typecasting, Rayna. Not good.”
 

Helena handed the baby to Julio and the two women embraced. Although they had never met in person, there was an immediate closeness of those whose lives depended on each other—Helena masterminded the op where Rayna killed the Colombian cartel leader who was responsible for killing Rayna’s fiancée.
 

When the baby started to pout, Julio bounced the child, trying to pacify her.

“Can I hold her?” Rayna asked.

“Be my guest.” Julio gratefully handed the toddler to Rayna. He noted Rayna’s unvoiced curiosity—the child was a couple of shades darker than either Julio or Helena. “Marlena is adopted.”

Barry explained. “After you and I left Colombia, I had a team go to Uraba to clean up. In one of the huts was this abandoned baby. The mother, one of the natives, was dead. No idea who the father is.”

Rayna’s eyes caressed Marlena. There was a deeper bond developing in her about the Fidelitas organization. Many years ago, she was adopted and she too knew little of the details of her birth, other than it was under dark circumstances.

Marlena began to howl, and Rayna handed her back to Helena. “I can handle an AK-47, but this is beyond me.”

Helena kissed Julio. “She’s hungry and probably needs a diaper change. We’ll catch up with you later.” She headed down a hall, then stopped and turned around. “Any time you’re free, we could always do with a babysitter.”

“We have seven kids, all under five,” added Julio.

“I need to catch up on things, too,” said Barry. “Julio, can you finish the tour with Rayna? And,” he told Rayna, “I’m not sloughing him off on you. There is no one who knows this complex better than Julio.”

Chapter 7
 

In a small town in Ontario’s cottage country, the owner of the general store was ecstatic to have the attractive, dark-skinned woman as a customer. In less than half an hour, she had rung up a three-hundred-fifty-dollar tab, paid for in cash. Clothes, a pay-as-you-go cell phone, food snacks, and sunglasses. The woman wrote on a sheet of paper that the friend she was staying with got very ill and gave her a virus that prevented her from speaking. It was also why she had to buy a bus ticket back to Toronto so her friend wouldn’t have to drive back. Feeling magnanimous, the storeowner gave Fatima a roll of throat lozenges.

Finally, after a nail-biting past few days, the four-hour ride from the pleasant countryside to Canada’s largest city gave Fatima a chance to rest, relax and reflect on the journey that had brought her here.

***

Being children of a religious leader was hard for the freewheeling Fatima and Ahmed. When they were young, they discovered the internet and, even though it was slow and erratic in their native Iraq, they managed to see the glamorous lifestyles of American royalty: movie stars and athletes. Like kids throughout the world, they hoped someday to live that American fantasy life, a pipe dream if there ever was one. No, their destiny had been pre-determined before their births. Ahmed was going to take over his father’s work as the imam at the Mosque of Ali in the small Iraqi town of al Juwat and, before she hit the end of her teenage years, Fatima would be married and have at least two kids.

There was a snag in the imam’s plan, though—Ahmed was a lousy student. None of the hired tutors were able to help him; he hated the tutors even more than he hated school. The only reason he got through was because Fatima helped him. Their father prohibited Fatima from going to school, so Ahmed showed her what he was learning. Even though she had no prior knowledge of the subjects, the precocious sister was able to grasp and assimilate the material easily. She patiently explained the material to Ahmed in an easier-to-understand fashion that allowed him to pass his courses. When the imam discovered this, he had no choice but to relent and allow Fatima to attend school with Ahmed. When it came time to go to college, Ahmed refused to go to any university in the Middle East. Moreover, he would not go anywhere unless Fatima went as well.
 

The political climate of the time gave the siblings an opportunity. Their father, while hardly a moderate, hated what Saddam Hussein was doing. Fatima convinced their father that Ahmed might help begin a healing of relationships between his beloved Iraq and the United States if he were allowed to go to college there to learn about their people. Naturally, as his tutor, Fatima would attend as well. Despite his misgivings, their father allowed the siblings to go after they promised to adhere to the strict moral and ethical code they had been raised with.

While the father wanted them to go to Yale or Harvard, the only school that would accept Ahmed and Fatima was the inauspicious Brookside College in northern California. With seriously declining enrollment and funding dropping even faster, the school was happy to take on foreign students—even those with lousy grades and abysmal SAT scores.

Naturally, like American students leaving home for the first time to live on their own, the promises the duo had made to their father were broken almost as soon as they set foot on campus. For two years, the brother and sister majored in debauched party time and minored in everything else. And their best bros and broettes? Christian pastors’ kids. The offspring of these two opposing defenders of the faith joined in activities that would be blasphemous or sacrilegious in any religion. They included unbridled amounts of booze, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Beer-guzzling festivals. Wet T-shirt contests. And, of course, the “6 Gs:” Girls, girls, girls and guys, guys, guys.